Excellence in the knowledge-based economy: from scientific to research excellence

Abstract

In 2013, the European Union unveiled its new 'Composite Indicator for Scientific and Technological Research Excellence', marking a turning point in how excellence is understood and used in European policy. This is not an isolated occurrence; policy-based interest in excellence is growing all over the world. The heightened focus on excellence and in particular, attempts to define it through quantitative indicators can have important implications for research policy and for the conduct of research itself. This paper examines how the European Union's understanding of excellence has evolved in recent years, from the presentation of the Lisbon strategy in 2000 to the current Europe 2020 strategy. We find a distinct shift in the understanding of excellence and how success in the knowledge-based economy should be achieved: in the early period, excellence is a fuzzy concept, intrinsically embedded in research and researchers and revealed by peer review. In the later period, excellence is more sharply defined and connected with a particular sort of knowledge, that which produces breakthroughs; the result is that policymakers have turned their focus towards directly steering and controlling what is increasingly considered to be the key element for success in the knowledge-based economy. This change is evidenced by the 'Composite Indicator for Scientific and Technological Research Excellence', its rationale and its components, and also provides an entry point into viewing the implications of what happens to excellence when we start to measure it this way. Acknowledgement Financial support from Aarhus University's Senior Management Strategic Funds for the project 'Contextualizing and Measuring Research Performance' (CoRe) is gratefully acknowledged. The authors would also like to thank Emil Bargmann Madsen for practical help with table 1 and 2 and different coding tasks and two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments.

Technological research in the EU is less efficient than the world average. EU research policy risks Europeans’ future

“…In scientometrics, references to excellence are very frequent (e.g., (Bonaccorsi et al, 2017b;Tijssen et al, 2002); in 2014 there were more than 70,000 references to "research excellence" in research literature (Sorensen et al, 2016). However, in most cases, excellence is associated to a fuzzy concept for which "no single indicator of excellence can be used in isolation to capture the full picture" (Tijssen, 2003), p. 95).…”

“…On the other hand, the most relevant studies should be performed in technological fields that are the most likely to produce the breakthroughs that support the knowledge-based economy. This notion is summarized with the sentence "The sort of research that matters is thus the kind that can deliver high financial returns through scientific breakthroughs and their commercialization" (Sorensen et al, 2016), p. 224). Therefore, in the first place, we identified research topics at the forefront of technological research.…”

“…For this purpose we used of the ep index, which measures the intrinsic efficiency or breakthrough potential of the research system and is a metric of excellence, and the P'top 0.01% indicator to estimate the number of breakthroughs (explained in section 3). Moreover, our focus on technological research is justified because many claims about the scientific excellence of EU research are focused on technological topics that support the knowledge-based economy (Sorensen et al, 2016). The following are two such claims which explain our focus: "One of Europe's major weaknesses lies in its inferiority in terms of transforming the results of technological research and skills into innovations and competitive advantages" ((European-Commission, 1995), p. 5) and "The objective of Horizon 2020 is to reinforce and extend the excellence of the Union's science base and to consolidate the European Research Area in order to make the Union's research and innovation system more competitive on a global scale" ((European-Commission, 2017a), p. 106).…”

The contrasting roles of science and technology in environmental challenges

“…For environmental solutions to be effective, interdisciplinary research should couple human and natural systems. Technological change is a multi-layered process that unfolds unevenly in time and space, often beyond individual scientists' perspectives (Sorensen, Bloch, & Young, 2015).…”

Struggles over Legitimate Science

“…) Also, the rise of New Public Management (NPM) doctrines in recent decades has increased the use of steering mechanisms, especially performance-based funding to ensure the productivity and efficiency of universities (Elzinga 2012;Slaughter and Leslie 1997). These reforms have aimed to enhance competitiveness, improve academic performance and increase the internationalisation of national science systems (Pinheiro et al 2014;Sørensen et al 2016).…”