Policy Brief, Issue 10/ New insights into project-based R&D funding from RISIS datasets: Some evidence from EFIL and NATPRO

The exploration of project-based R&D activities supported by public research funding organisations (RFOs) has become a core research issue in science and innovation policy studies. RISIS has a strong focus in responding to this growing interest and related recently increased demand from the research community but also policy makers by maintaining and developing datasets on project-based R&D, both from a performing perspective (EUPRO) as well as from a perspective of R&D funding programs across European countries (EFIL). While EUPRO has been an established RISIS dataset comprising systematic information on European R&D projects and participations (mainly from the FP), it recently shifts – within the new NAPTRO module – attention to the collection and integration of national R&D projects as an important complement to the existing European ones. To cover the funding perspective, EFIL has been set up as a completely new dataset currently under development collecting data on national R&D policy programs at the level of policy instruments. This policy brief discusses the broader conceptual background of the two datasets, the main methodological data collection procedures, but also comes up with some initial illustrative empirical examples underlining the relevance of EFIL and EUPRO/NATPRO both in a research and policy context. The two datasets are not only integrated with each other, but also inter-linked with other datasets of the RISIS data nexus, in particular via RISIS organisation registers enabling to connect with other R&D output oriented datasets on e.g. patents or publications.