Editor’s Note: Today’s post is by Alexa Pearce. Alexa is the Gershwind & Bennett Family Associate Vice Provost for Collections and Scholarly Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. She has held previous librarian roles at the University of Michigan and New York University and has taught in LIS programs at the University of Michigan School of Information, the Pratt Institute, and Long Island University

At the risk of invoking the oxymoronic, the Endless Frontier is having a moment.

Among other topics gathering renewed interest in the first half of 2025 is Vannevar Bush’s titular vision for the American research enterprise.

As readers of op-eds and listeners of podcasts likely know by now, Vannevar Bush wrote Science: The Endless Frontier (hereafter abbreviated as EF) in 1945, at the request of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Second World War was drawing to a close and Roosevelt and Bush shared in the perspective that a plan was needed, in order for peacetime science to proceed with anything approaching the scale that the war had enabled.

Through subsequent decades, the report has served as both:

1. a specific and applicable blueprint for a federally funded partnership between the U.S. government and U.S. universities to conduct basic research in the postwar era and
2. an evocative expression of uniquely American aspirations to continuously break barriers and push forward a frontier of progress in scientific and technological innovation.

Recognizing the EF’s role in both of these capacities, as blueprint and as symbol, helps to explain why it is invoked with frequency and conviction now, as the country grapples (again) with the relationship between science and the American public. Of course, in 1945, the country also engaged with questions that implicated the relationship between science and the American public. The opening lines of FDR’s letter to Bush, to which the EF served as formal response, indicated that a nation at peace could still do research, as it had in wartime, now redirected toward “the improvement of the national health, the creation of new enterprises bringing new jobs, and the betterment of the national standard of living.” Among the set of specific questions that followed was, “What can the Government do now and in the future to aid research activities by public and private organizations? The proper roles of public and of private research, and their interrelation, should be carefully considered.”

How did Vannevar Bush answer the question? According to the many EF commenters of late – ranging from university presidents to policy makers to members of the investor class – very effectively. One such EF proponent is Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s National Security Advisor. As a guest on Ezra Klein’s New York Times podcast with approximately one week remaining in Biden’s presidency, Sullivan led with the EF when prompted by Klein for 3 book recommendations, Klein’s standard closing question for guests. After listing several areas of research and innovation for which the EF can bring continuing relevance in its blueprint capacity (AI, semiconductors, clean energy, quantum, and biotech), Sullivan bolstered the recommendation further, remarking that it “makes, actually, for a very good read.”

Well, another very good read followed a few weeks later, in the form of an editorial by Mary Sue Coleman in Inside Higher Ed (Coleman is president emerita of the Association of American Universities, president emerita of the University of Michigan, and former president of the University of Iowa). On the heels of the NIH’s February 7 announcement of its intention to reduce indirect cost recovery to a flat rate of 15%, Coleman wrote eloquently about the nature of the partnership between federal agencies and US universities that indirect costs, however technical their jargon, enable and sustain. Succinct in her discussion of indirect mechanics, Coleman’s piece elevates the EF as symbol. We learn about a high-stakes Oval Office summons from FDR to Vannevar Bush, just as the Allies were liberating Europe. Following from Bush’s declaration that “we better do something damn quick,” the federal investment in science “put a man on the moon, ended polio in the U.S., blunted the scourge of AIDS, and put the world in the palm of our hands with the smart phone.”

Additional highlights from the collective project of endorsing and historically narrating the EF include: this New York Times piece connecting the rise of venture capital to university research, this opinion piece in the BMJ, describing current risks to the U.S. research enterprise, this Physics Today reprint of an account of the NSF’s origins, this newsletter from Fast Company, describing AI research and what might happen to it without universities, this highlight reel of federally funded advances, and more. Here and there, we see alternative perspectives, but even if the EF as blueprint is questioned by some, the EF as symbol appears intact.

To reiterate, the Endless Frontier is having a moment — a moment arrived at with its twin engines of symbolic force and technical prowess, fueled by the momentum of eight decades and all that our historical imagination can bring to any present moment. The EF continues to serve as both symbol and blueprint, but it also describes a compact, through which the public invests in science and science serves the public. The necessary conditions for sustaining this compact are at risk and its stakeholders have engaged in a project to communicate its EF origins, and the role of Vannevar Bush, to a broad – and public – audience.

As We May Think

Vannevar Bush was a prolific writer. Beyond the EF, he shared his insights and perspectives on many aspects of science, research, and society, including the conditions that he considered essential for scientific research to thrive. One area that Bush was invested in and wrote about with conviction also happens to be a domain that necessarily implicates the relationship between science and the public, namely, scholarly communication.

My own recommendation for getting further acquainted with Vannevar Bush’s writing is to carve out some time for “As We May Think,” (AWMT), which was published in The Atlantic in July, 1945, the same month that the EF was completed. Bush’s concern in AWMT was the growth of the scholarly record and the challenge of organizing it so that busy researchers could find and make use of it. Bush described an acute need to modernize and automate this work and then presented a solution, in the form of a futuristic device for organizing, viewing, recalling, and even sharing scientific literature.

I cannot do justice to the delightful prose with which Bush made the case that scholarly publications are only as useful as they are retrievable, but instead offer a few teasers in the hope that AWMT may garner a portion of the renewed interest in the EF. A small sample of quotes to give a general picture:

 “The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.”

“A record if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted.”

 “Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, ‘memex’ will do.”

AWMT is typically celebrated for its prescient description of the memex and its hints at web-based searching and browsing, perhaps more so than its emphasis on the volume of scholarly literature or the premise that growth in volume was directly diminishing the likelihood of useful consultation. However, the themes of use and utility drove Bush’s arguments and illustrations, so that he ultimately described a future in which researchers could leverage technological innovation to relinquish the more laborious aspects of finding, using, and finding again the elements of the scholarly record needed to advance their work.

For all the prescience and themes of enduring resonance that characterize Bush’s writing, one topic that he left unaddressed in AWMT is that of broad public access to scholarly literature, a problem that many of us wish had a blueprint as well developed and as heartily endorsed as the EF. Indeed, not only did Bush not address public access, he alluded to the narrowness of potential audiences, owing to specialization and its increasing necessity “for progress.” For example, and to give one more sample of Bush’s prose: “Mendel’s concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it.” In other words, the world at large stood to benefit from Mendel’s work, but via a narrow path through experts with specialized knowledge.

Public access

In the months and years since the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s (OSTP’s) release of its August 2022 public access memo, I have been reflecting on how it contrasts with AWMT. Whereas AWMT is about the individual, specialized researcher, the OSTP memo is about the broader public. Whereas AWMT centers people and their ways of thinking, recalling, and connecting ideas, the OSTP memo centers artifacts, the articles and datasets that reflect and convey the questions and evidence driving scientific inquiry. Whereas AWMT prompts us to reflect on the development of researcher-oriented tools and services, the OSTP memo reminds us that researchers and their institutions are accountable. AWMT suggests a focus on the role of scientific innovation in advancing access to human knowledge, whereas the OSTP memo demands that we make better plans for managing our research outputs. We can either see the researcher as the protagonist, or the public.

The current moment, this resurgent moment for the EF, presents us with another, more productive pathway. If we recognize the EF as a compact through which the public invests in science and science serves the public, it follows that we examine our implementation of public access policies accordingly. Can we ask the public to continue investing in science without enabling a level of access to the outputs and evidence that matches its level of investment? Can we ask scientists to continue prioritizing research of broad societal benefit without renewed investments in infrastructure, services, and initiatives that support and facilitate their work?

While the easy answer to both questions is: of course not, the elusive, broadly endorsed blueprint for implementing public access policies remains to be developed. However, the more time we spend debating whether the NIH should have moved up its timeline, the less time we spend understanding how researchers and the public can leverage and use the evidence and data that will continue to be more accessible to them.

Within the space of a few weeks, many, many people have made compelling efforts to simplify and convey the concept of indirect cost recovery to mass audiences. Perhaps this shared effort can serve as a reminder that public access to science can and should be accompanied by exciting and inspiring explanations of how the science works and what it enables.

Many scientists have spent years (and substantial resources) seeking out and utilizing pathways to publish their work openly, understanding their improved prospects for reaching other scientists, as well as policy makers and the public. Perhaps the goals of broad reach, accelerated uptake by colleagues, and societal impact can serve as a reminder that investments in science include investments in its dissemination.

For Vannevar Bush, the ability to consult and use the outputs of research was essential. He also recognized the benefits to our collective wellbeing, noting that “man’s spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems.” As mentioned above, his prose is delightful. In addition, it is relatable: “His excursions may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important.”

In the spirit of useful and discoverable research, in this moment for the Endless Frontier, let’s enable public access.

Author note: I am grateful to Nick Wigginton for joining me in the effort to capture and appreciate the Endless Frontier in its current moment.