How to assess the efficiency of science and technology policy?

The lecture began with the rhetoric question concerning the efficiency of policy tools for the achievement of specific goals. Mr. Korotkov made a comparison with technical devices that we often have to deal with on a regular basis; and if you don’t know the exact application of it, the outcome can be totally different from what you expect. For the sake of deeper understanding of the topic, precise distinction between definitions of ‘strategy’, ‘action’, ‘goal’ and ‘outcome’ was considered. The most important component in the implementation process of strategy is the goal, while actions serve as instruments. Nevertheless, in some cases the goal and the outcome of the strategy may not correspond to each other. Videos from movies and a series “Breaking Bad” allowed to grasp the core issue.

After all the concepts and definitions became clear to the audience, the lecturer moved on to consideration of science and technology strategies formulations, in particular, those adopted in developed countries (OECD countries). For example, the goal of the United Kingdom science policy goes as followed: “Make the United Kingdom the best place in the world for innovations”.

The next part of the lecture focused on the situation in Russia, especially on the assessment system of current science and technology strategy. Mr. Korotkov highlighted that there are 5 main groups of indicators used: financial indicators, the quality of implemented projects, the demand on those projects, cooperation with foreign partners and the degree of compliance between set goals and the outcome or results. The most vital point here is to apply all above-mentioned indicators in combination; otherwise, the assessment will not be complete. For instance, such an approach is used for the assessment of development institutions of the Ministry of Science and Education of the Russian Federation. It was noted that this methodological approach is pretty complicated which provides the results on the basis of detailed survey.

After the main part of the lecture students asked questions concerning other indicators that could possibly be used for evaluation process. Mr. Korotkov pointed out that citation indexes, such as Hirsch Index (H-Index), can serve as an assessment tool. The lecturer also said a few words about the project “The Map of the Russian Science” which includes classification and visualization of the data on 37 109 Russian scientific papers stocked in the Scopus Database from 2007 to 2016.