FCT joins OECD project on public funding for R&D and Innovation

The national register of funding allocated to R&D and Innovation in Portugal - SciPROJ -, developed by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), through its FCCN Unit, began a process of integration in Fundstat, a data infrastructure of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which brings together information from 22 databases from various countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States and the European Commission.

Fundstat is an infrastructure for analysis and international comparison of public funding for R&D and Innovation projects, taking advantage of the richness of the semantic information existing in the project information, using tools of artificial intelligence, namely natural language processing. In addition to producing information and appropriate indicators on funding, this infrastructure aims to analyse the directionality of public funding, identifying emerging scientific and technological areas. In this context, and based on information already available at Fundstat, the public investment in the area of Artificial Intelligence and the investment related to the Covid-19 pandemic was recently analysed and is awaiting publication.

SciPROJ is the national database, developed under the PTCRIS program, which aggregates national (FCT, NSRF, Portugal 2020 and ANI) and international (European Union) funding records that support science and technology activities developed in Portugal. PTCRIS aims to promote the integration of the science management systems of the various entities operating in the academic-scientific ecosystem, in order to comply with the principle "Register once, reuse multiple times". These initiatives are part of the open data policy of the FCT and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education (MCTES).

This sharing will make it possible to integrate information about Portugal in future OECD studies and to obtain information on the direction of funding in relevant areas, such as, for example, the Green Transition and the Sustainable Development Goals.

The integration of data on R&D and Innovation funding in Portugal in this OECD analytical infrastructure is part of FCT's participation, through the Division of Studies and Planning (DEP), in the MARIAD (Management and Analysis of R&D and Innovation Administrative Data) working group. MARIAD was created in 2022 under the NESTI (National Experts on Science and Technology Indicators) and aims to use R&I administrative funding data to inform evidence-based policy making.

The OECD has 38 member countries committed to promoting democracy and the market economy, supporting governments in exercises to compare experiences and good practices and to coordinate their policies, as well as seeking answers and solutions to common problems.