National Cancer Institute

About the NCI Funded Research Portfolio

The NCI Funded Research Portfolio (NFRP) web site contains information about research grants, contract awards, and intramural research projects funded by the National Cancer Institute. The NFRP provides access to various NCI budget reports that contain information about research funding according to specific research categories. It also provides the ability to search the database in various ways, including text searching of project abstracts and the ability to search the NIH research categories that are assigned to projects carried out by extramural and intramural groups.

How does NCI generate NFRP funding data?

At the close of each fiscal year, NCI asks each of its scientific organizations to report their research funding according to specific research categories. The reports that NCI intramural and extramural programs provide are then combined to determine the NCI funding totals for individual research areas. The total research funding for each category is reviewed and verified before NCI publishes on the NCI web site, Cancer.gov.

What is scientific coding?

Scientific coding refers to the categorization of research projects according to scientific focus. In this process, research projects are analyzed and classified according to scientific topic and content. Scientific coding allows the development of science-based budget information, which can be used in portfolio analysis to examine the distribution of funds across research areas. Scientific coding is also necessary to answer inquiries about the scientific and budgetary aspects of Institute-funded research.

NCI employs a sophisticated system of scientific coding in which trained professionals and/or scientific staff analyze grant applications, contracts, and intramural projects to classify each project for its degree of relevance to Special Interest Category (SIC) and Organ Site (SITE) codes. This coding structure is meant to describe in a consistent way the major scientific disciplines requested by NIH, DHHS, Congress, and the public. A critical characteristic of coded data is comparability from one fiscal year to the next. This process allows the Institute to respond quickly to requests for information from NCI staff and the broader community. The coding definitions used by the NCI intramural program are consistent with those used for extramural grants and research and development (R&D) contracts to maintain accuracy across the Institute's portfolio.