Investimenti nei programmi di ricerca congiunti e impatto sul sistema della ricerca

Even if about 85% of public research funding is managed through national programs by large accessible only to national performers (European Commission, 2008), during the last four decades we witnessed an increased relevance of programs involving an European and international dimension in public research policies, either in the form of research funding programs jointly managed by different national states (joint research programs) or through access to national programs to performers located in other countries (open research programs; European Commission 2008a). The development of joint and open research programs are currently seen as a central initiative to improve the quality, efficiency and structuring of the European Research Areas. Unsurprisingly, the report of the expert group on ERA Indicators and Monitoring proposes a composite indicator on open and joint programming as one the headline indicators for monitoring of the ERA (European Commission 2009).
Despite their relevance, data on these programs are at best very partial and incomplete and do not allow an overall assessment of their relevance, beyond the simple description of some exemplary cases as done in the recent ERAWATCH report on ERA monitoring; this is largely due to the fact that the current system of R! statistics has been designed in a time where joint programming was of limited importance (Lepori 2009).
In this context, the JOREP project aims to provide a sound quantitative basis for the monitoring of investments in joint and open research programs in EU countries, as well as first empirical evidence of the policy rationales and impacts of these programs on the European Research Area. More precisely, the projects objectives are the following:
- first, to develop the infrastructure, including definitions, typologies and classifications and procedures for data collection, for the systematic long-term data collection on open and joint programming in Europe. This will include both the procedures for the regular collection of a core set of variables to be integrated in the European ERA monitoring system and the ones suggested for more in-depth studies on specific fields and cases.
- second, adopting these definitions, to perform a data collection on eleven European countries for the period 2000-2009 and to use these data for an in-depth quantitative analysis of the development of open and joint programming in the involved countries.
- third, to provide evidence on the political intentions beyond this type of programs and their future development, as well as on their impact on the ERA through a set of case studies integrating the data on programs with information on performers behaviour´s and impacts.