Project history and dynamics Sample Clauses

Project history and dynamics. 1.2.1. A field in need of a distributed infrastructure a) It is born “interdisciplinary” from its beginning in the years 1960, mixing economics, political science, sociology and management. This is well illustrated by its core journal “Research Policy” which is a rare case of a journal ranked among the best in three different disciplines. At the same time, it explains still today why the field has often difficulties to be “located” in the established disciplinary framework, re- search groups or centres being often classified either in sociology, in economics or in management. b) It has had a quantitative arm from the beginning. In fact the “moment” that drove to the development of the field is linked with the emergence of “Science policies” at OECD (with the famous Frascati manual). Similarly the structuration of databases around outputs (publications and patents) has conditioned the emergence of scientometric approaches in the years 1970. Data and indicators have thus been one critical dimension of the research field. It has driven to the development of specific data collection and databases mostly handled by statistical offices (for the input indicators) and through international databases (for the scientific and technological output). The beginning of the years 2000 drove to questioning both the framework which underlies the construction of S&T indicators – the input-output model as process – and the type and level of data constructed – at the national level and with four types of performing actors (higher education institutions, private companies, public research organizations, government). New questions have boomed: is the delineation of actors at the national level still relevant when multinational firms dominate the economic landscape and when 200 of them represent half of world industrial R&D? Can we consider universities as similar when 200 of them in Europe represent 80% of total university publications in Europe? How to reflect the ways states allocate money and what balance does (or should) exist between core and competitive funding? How to monitor the development of new sciences when frontier research becomes a policy priority and transcends disciplinary borders? Etc. These questions have driven the community to speak of a new type of indicators, positioning indicators (Xxxxxx et al., 2008) focusing on actors and their networks in innovation systems. They have driv- en public authorities (in particular the EC) to fund on an ad-hoc basis target...