Quality systems guidelines for research

Highlights the increasing pressure research managers are feeling to improve quality and reduce costs of R&D and points out that some funding agencies are looking for quality standards to impose on laboratories to help guarantee data quality. Details the difficulties the US national laboratories have already experienced in dealing with nuclear quality standards, and the immense popularity of the ISO 9000 series of international standards, which threatens to inflict similar Angst on industrial laboratories. Describes how, consequently, the American National Standards Institute has chartered a writing group to prepare guidelines for quality systems for research.