During the last decades, Spanish efforts on science and innovation had a relevant development and catalytic effect on excellent science, transfer of knowledge, business innovation, and the evolution of new technological concepts. If we look at some indicators of our national system, we see that it
has reached the group of the most developed countries from a scientific, technological, and innovative point of view:
- Spain is the fourth country receiving the most funds from the Horizon 2020 EU Framework Program 2012-2020, returning a greater amount than it contributes (10.4% of the total allocated budget 1).
- Spain is the eleventh country in the number of scientific publications 2 and contributes 12.23% of the most cited articles. In percentage terms, Spain produces about 3% (WOS) of all scientific publications in the world.
- Spanish researchers have published more than 1.48 million scientific documents in two decades. A figure that exceeds the production of countries such as South Korea, Russia, and the Netherlands. In 2020, almost 55% of the scientific documents signed by Spaniards were international collaborations, according to the indicators included in ICONO as Web of Science 3.
- According to the National Aggregator for Open Access Repositories, RECOLECTA 4, Spanish researchers have archived more than 2 million documents in Open Access.
- Spain already has more than two hundred thousand people employed in activities related to Research and Innovation (R&I) 5.
- Spain has increased its budget dedicated to R&I from 0.81% in 1994 to 1.25% in 2019 6, with a peak of 1.40% in 2010.
- The Spanish ecosystem is made up of Public Research Bodies, universities (83 Spanish universities: 50 public and 33 private 7 ), and a system of internationally competitive research centers throughout the national territory.
National governance framework
The Science, Technology, and Innovation Law (14/2011) (LCTI) 9 establishes the
governance framework for the R&I ecosystem in Spain. The commitment to R&I, as a
policy that accelerates progress and facilitates the establishment of synergies, is fully
reflected in the Law covering the main aspects of the Spanish Science and Technology
System: Governance, Human Resources, the different Agents, the Transfer of results
and of course, Internationalization.
Under the Ministry of Science and Innovation, both the General Secretariat for
Research and the General Secretariat for Innovation are responsible for the
articulation of R&I public policies at the State level.
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