METRICS FOR THE SCOTTISH RESEARCH BASE
In February 2008, the Scottish Government published the results of a study commenced under the previous administration on the performance of Scotland's research base.
The report, " Metrics for the Scottish Research Base" , carried out by the company Evidence Ltd, shows that investment in our research base has produced very positive results in terms of quality and impact. It confirms Scotland's world-leading position on the overall rate of citation, and our almost world-leading position of the impact of our research.
The report provides, for the first time in many instances, information on the performance of Scotland's research base relative to that of the 26 comparator countries which are responsible for around 95 per cent of the world's top research. It contains information on research carried out in universities, research institutes, the NHS and by industry. It assesses Scotland's performance relative to the UK, G7, EU25 and similar sized EU economies such as Belgium, Denmark, and Finland. The data analysed are largely for the 10 year period up to and including 2005.
Results
We are first in the world in terms of the rate our research papers are cited, relative to our GDP. Scotland captures 1% of world citations.
We are ranked second in the world behind only Switzerland and ahead of the USA in terms of impact of the research we produce. Impact is measured as the average number of citations per paper, and this has been increasing progressively over the last ten years.
Our best performing research fields, in terms of impact, are clinical sciences (2nd in the world), health and related sciences (1st), and biological sciences (3rd). Other strongly performing subjects are physical sciences and mathematics.
The productivity of Scotland's research workforce, in terms of citations per researcher is third in the world, behind Switzerland and the Netherlands.
The impact of our research is strong across a diverse range of subjects, putting Scotland in a good position, compared with other leading research economies, to exploit upcoming science areas of the future.
We are maintaining a high level of public investment in R&D, at 0.95% of GDP, compared with 0.6% for the UK as a whole and 0.7% for a comparator group of countries.
Our output in terms of our global share of PhDs and publications is around 0.8%. This is good and better than our share of overall R&D spend would suggest (0.3%).
Scotland has a broad linkage between PhD training and research impact whereas this is absent for many competitor countries.
Scotland is very slightly above average on researchers and R&D personnel relative to the national labour force.
Private sector investment in R&D is only 39% of overall R&D investment in Scotland whereas in most economies it makes up around two thirds of the total.
The Scottish private sector only employs 22% of researchers whereas it employs around 60% of researchers in the UK.
Scotland produces relatively fewer PhDs in relation to its spend on Higher Education R&D than most comparator group nations, and is below the UK and EU average.
PhD output relative to spend is declining in the natural sciences, where awards are mostly concentrated.
Numbers of citations are weaker in mathematics and engineering. The impact of publications in Engineering is below average.
Scotland's share of world journal article publications has declined since 2000, albeit the shared peaked in that year, and the share in 2005 was similar to that in 1996.
Links
Evidence and SQW page
UK evidence PSA Report