The Minister of Education Jokin Bildarratz, presented this morning together with the Vice Minister of Universities and Research, Adolfo Morais, and the Scientific Director of Ikerbasque, Fernando Cossío, the results of the 2022 Report on Science in Euskadi. The report includes the main results of the Basque Country regarding research staff, science funding, scientific results and technology transfer through the indicators monitored by Ikerboost, the Basque Observatory of Science and Technology.
Scientific production in the Basque Country has increased by 3% in the last year, reaching 7,846 annual publications. This represents a growth of 16% compared to the prepandemic scientific output. The relative weight of the Basque Country has increased in the last ten years and in 2021 it has reached 6.4% of the scientific production of Spain. Euskadi has almost doubled its scientific production in the last decade.
Likewise, the quality of research production has increased considerably and is reflected in two aspects: The percentage of scientific production published in journals in the first quartile - the journals considered to be the most prestigious- has doubled in the last decade in the Basque Country. In 2021, for the first time, more than 60% of scientific production has been produced in world-class journals.
On the other hand, researchers from the Basque Country collaborate when publishing the results of the research with the main science-producing countries worldwide: the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy. The internationalization of scientific production in the Basque Country has increased by almost 15 points over the last decade, going from 40% of publications with international collaboration in 2011 to 55% in 2021. In these international collaborations, researchers from the Basque Country have a relevant position, being in many cases the main authors of the publications.
According to INE data for 2020, the Basque Country is the autonomous community of Spain that invests the most in R&D activities as a percentage of its GDP, with an investment higher than 2%. The latest R&D investment data for the Basque Country published by Eustat indicates an increase of more than 10% compared to the previous year, reaching the historical maximum of 1,645 million euros in 2021.
Likewise, the Basque Country is the leading autonomous community in the return per capita of the European Horizon Europe programme, raising more than €100M in 2021. The Horizon Europe Program has been established as a key tool for the research and innovation activities of the EU.
Within this programme, the ERC grants from the European Research Council deserve a special mention: these are projects that provide support to researchers of any nationality and age who wish to continue their research at the frontiers of knowledge. Currently it has become an indicator of excellence, recognized internationally, due to the high number of proposals and the demanding evaluation process that follows. In the Basque Country, a total of 42 ERC projects have been developed. In 2022 there are 20 projects underway.
Regarding the scientific production by sector, Basque universities participate in 65% of the total scientific output in the Basque Country - promoted by the UPV/EHU, the main Basque scientific institution, with a contribution of almost 4,500 indexed publications in 2021 -, followed by the health sector, the BERC and CIC centers, and the technology centers. Over recent years, the Basque Country has promoted new research centers (BERCs, CICs and IISs) that have a growing weight in the Basque science system. In addition, the collaboration between the university sector, BERC, CIC, health and technological sectors increases year after year.
During the last decade, the main thematic areas in which Euskadi investigates have maintained; the area where it is most published is Medicine, followed by Engineering, Materials Sciences, Physics and Astronomy and Chemistry. In addition, in the last 10 years, productivity in Social Sciences and Humanities has experienced a very remarkable growth.
Likewise, it is worth mentioning that around 5% of the scientific production of Euskadi is cited in patents, once sufficient time has elapsed since the generation of the new knowledge to its application.
Research community
In 2020, the Basque Country exceeds 21,300 people dedicated to research for the first time in its history. In full-time equivalent (FTE), there would be more than 13,500 people dedicated to research, which consolidates the upward trend in the number of researchers. These figures indicate that more than 2% of the active population in the Basque Country is dedicated to R&D work, that is, 2 people out of every 100 employees in the Basque Country are fully or partially dedicated to research. This percentage positions Euskadi as the leading autonomous community in the state in this indicator.
In 2020, nearly 500 people defended their doctoral theses at the three Basque universities, 11% more than the previous year. Despite the fact that the number of men and women who defend doctoral theses is similar, the number of women who consolidate their research careers is lower, in fact, in 2020 the percentage of women in EDP barely reaches 35%.
To download the report:
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