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The 13th RISIS Policymakers Session, a crucial event focused on monitoring and analyzing research careers to guide policy making in the European Research Area, took place in Brussels on June 8th, 2023 in HYBRID FORMAT. The event aimed to bring together policymakers, researchers, and professionals from various fields to discuss the challenges and opportunities in understanding and supporting research careers. By exploring frameworks and strategies for data collection, the session provided valuable insights into shaping effective policies that foster research excellence. The Policymakers Session explored various aspects related to research careers and changing frameworks. It started with an introduction by Emanuela Reale, Director of IRCrES, CNR & Member of RISIS Governing Board, providing an overview of the RISIS projects and infrastructure. The first session, titled “Research Careers and Changing Frameworks”, featured presentations by Carolina Cañibano from CSIC, who discussed the conceptual framework for studying science research careers, and Dario Capezzuto from the European Commission, DG RTD, R&I actors and research careers who delved into the scenario of research careers in Europe. The second session, “Monitoring Research Careers,” covered topics such as data collection strategies and their combination in RISIS2, presented by Stephan Stahlschmidt from DZHW, and the development of the Doctoral Degree and Career Pilot Dataset (DDC), presented by Eric Iversen from NIFU. Tudor Ion from the European Commission, DG RTD, and Fernando Galindo-Rueda from the OECD discussed monitoring research careers through a Research and Innovation Careers Observatory. In the afternoon a presentations on “The DocEnhance Career-Tracking Survey of Doctorate Holders” by Julia Boman from the European Science Foundation and “The German National Academics Panel Study (NACAPS)” by Sarah Widany from DZHW. The event ended with a final open debate., Video of discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOrro7qlZOU

FOSSR kick-off meeting was held on November 25, 2022 in Rome in a hybrid format. The folder contains the poster with the agenda of the meeting and presentations on the development of the project with the general objectives and main descriptions and actions of the WP., Link to the video of the event (italian language): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_LSsfKHr2k

This volume presents the results of a web-based survey carried out by CNR-IRCrES to deepening the effects of the agile working implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of the Italian Public Research Organizations (PROs). The survey was launched one year after the beginning of the emergency implementation of agile working and was targeted to the researchers and technologists of two PROs, the National Research Council (CNR) and the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF). Investigating attitudes and opinions of PRO researchers and technologists allowed to shed light on the value of autonomous organization of individual scientific work, an activity that is characterized by a very high level of creativity, and it is commonly organized by projects and goals to be achieved, with a flexible mode of working. The contents focus on how agile working during the pandemic affected several aspects of research work – including autonomy and creativity in knowledge production, scientific productivity, researchers’ well-being, use of ICT tools and services – and on the environmental implications that could be expected. The analysis allowed for a deeper understanding of the processes of individual adaptation/reaction to the implementation of agile working, which is supposed to be maintained and whose regular implementation needs a rethinking of the existing rules within the PROs. Pros and cons of the experience of agile working in PROs during the COVID-19 pandemic supply interesting evidence to the decision makers for designing the future of this different way of working.

Major developments in governmental research and development (R&D) funding are associated with the emergence of programs as funding instruments. Programs include an explicit mission for R&D, scientific priorities including type of research to be undertaken, procedures for attaining funding, and a budget that also contains regulations for monitoring and evaluation. A better understanding of programs implies understanding how R&D government policies are put into actions by research funding organizations and how funding programs are designed and implemented to address problems of social relevance nominated at policy levels. The aim of this chapter is to give a broad overview of the main theoretical advancements dealing with programs as instruments of governmental R&D policy. It seeks to explore two questions: what is the role of programs in government funding of R&D? How can we understand programs theoretically and design frameworks to empirically study them? A first contribution is to illustrate the diversity and the complex nature of research programs, as well as the strategies and objectives they reveal, the actors implementing the programs and the modes of implementation. A second contribution of the chapter is to develop new conceptual framings based on this theoretical review, also indicating relevant methods for doing empirical studies. Examples of recent and currently developing empirical data and infrastructures to investigate the diversity of funding programs using new concepts and empirical insights are discussed.

This report provides a comprehensive documentation and detailed description of the RISIS EFIL dataset. The dataset deals with public R&D funding in Europe at the level of project funding instruments and Research Funding Organizations (RFO), addressing questions related to policy design and policy implementation.This publication describes the contents of EFIL and provides technical specifications.

Studying the complexity of research policy instruments research is important because it allows us to gain a better understanding of how politics are evolving. This approach to the complexity of research funding instruments will provide new information for scholars and policymakers. First, this analysis could enhance our understanding of the technological and societal target orientation that drive project funding instruments. Second, it could help European countries and RFOs to find a more precise space for KETs and SGCs in their research policy agenda. In terms of project funding instrument orientation, the results show a clear differentiation between agencies and, as a result, between countries. In terms of KET and SGC instrument orientation, Norway, the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, and Denmark are more diversified. Furthermore, for Norway, Denmark, Germany, and the United Kingdom the degree of overlap among the categories is low. This means that there is a clear difference in instrument orientation, as well as between agencies within the same country with distinct and well-defined policy goals. Furthermore, to answer our second question, the funding instruments are mainly oriented towards “industrial biotechnology” for KET and “society” for SGC. There appears to be little opportunity for sustainability and climate change-related categories.

The project ‘The effects of evaluation on academic research: knowledge production and methodological issues’ (PRIN–Research Projects of National Interest 2017 - Prot. 2017NKWYFC), coordinated by CNR-IRCrES, aims to investigate the effects of the evaluation implemented by the government on research work and knowledge production, taking as a case the academics working in Italian universities. The project adopts an interdisciplinary approach that combines different skills in social sciences (sociology, economics and organisational studies), and qualitative and quantitative methodological tools. As regards the latter, as part of the activities of the CNR-IRCrES, a web survey has been launched between October 2020 and March 2021 at national level to collect information on the effects of the evaluation on various dimensions related to the academic research, including the decisions on the contents of research activities, the modes of codification of knowledge produced, the research networking, etc. The target population has been made up of all academics from the universities subject to evaluation by the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (ANVUR). The invitation link to fill in the online questionnaire has been sent to a probability sample selected through a ‘multi-stage’ stratified sampling method. The survey received 1,365 responses, yielding a response rate slightly higher than the 43%. This contribution outlines the survey's methodological approach, presenting the various stages of the research design. In addition, an analysis of the response rate and the sample representativeness in relation to the reference population will be presented. The design and the stages of implementation of the survey demonstrate their value as an original and robust methodological proposal for studying the research evaluation effects at the micro-level of the producers of knowledge.

RISIS project organized a sub-plenary at Eu-SPRI 2021 on the 9th of June (4 -5.30 pm) entitled RISIS NEW resources for researchers and policymakers: ESID and ISI-Trademark, with the aim to explore the two new Datasets now available for the researchers’ community and policymakers to face societal challenges. Emanuela Reale, CNR- IRCRES, opened the session illustrating RISIS infrastructure main goals and achievements. ESID, European Social Innovation Database illustrated by Abdullah Gok, University of Strathclyde, utilizes advanced machine learning and natural language processing techniques. RISIS ESID is a comprehensive and authoritative source of information on social innovation projects and actors in Europe and beyond. The main goal: to collect information about social innovation projects and actors from the publicly available information on the web. The advantages and innovative aspects of the new Dataset were explored by Dietmar Lampert, ZSI Centre for Social Innovation in a presentation entitled New social innovation resource for policymakers and researchers: ESID – is it useful? ISI-Trademark Data Collection (ISI-TM) illustrated by Peter Neuhäusler, Fraunhofer ISI, provides detailed information on trademarks filed at the EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office) and at the USPTO (the United States Patent and Trademark Office). The importance of these new RISIS resources has been further investigated by Eric Iversen, NIFU. The upcoming scenarios getting the most crucial development in the integration of the various RISIS resources have been depicted in the last part of the session by Thomas Scherngell, AIT Austrian Institute of Technology., Full video of the session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9g_-h0HG8w

Questo Capitolo si focalizza sulle diverse reti di conoscenza, in particolare quelle generate dalle collaborazioni di ricerca in Horizon 2020 e quelle collegate alle pubblicazioni in collaborazione internazionale. Vengono presentati alcuni indicatori sulla partecipazione italiana ai Programmi Quadro europei e un'analisi delle differenze territoriali esistenti nella produzione e condivisione di conoscenza scientifica. La conoscenza condivisa e creata a livello provinciale si riferisce al posizionamento nella rete dei progetti e pubblicazioni considerando finanziamenti ricevuti e numero di collaborazioni misurate attraverso la Social Network Analysis (SNA). Sulla base di diversi indicatori di produttività (tra cui le pubblicazioni scientifiche), la ricerca italiana è risultata sempre fra le prime al mondo, nonostante abbia una posizione decisamente inferiore per quel che riguarda i finanziamenti ordinari in R&S e numero di ricercatori. Osservando la geografia interna, invece, i risultati rivelano notevoli differenze tra le reti di conoscenza nelle province italiane. Esiste una non uniforme distribuzione della conoscenza nei diversi territori e un disallineamento tra centralità generate dai progetti e centralità generate dalle pubblicazioni scientifiche. Inoltre, troviamo effetti significativi delle condizioni economiche generali delle province sulla performance delle organizzazioni in Horizon 2020. Le conclusioni presentano alcuni suggerimenti per il decisore politico che derivano dall'analisi svolta.