Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Greece belongs to the group of European countries with moderate performance in research and innovation. However, Greek researchers stand out in scientific publications and the country ranks in 9th place in terms of participants and funding from the EU 7th Framework Programme for Research (FP7), according to the EU Commission’s Innovation Union Competitiveness Report 2011, presented in Brussels on June 9.
The Report analyses the strengths and weaknesses of national research and innovation systems and provides solid facts on which to base national policy choices.
In particular, in the relevant country profile on Greece, the Report states that the innovativeness of the Greek economy is of a "catching-up" kind, depending on imported technology and know-how and flourishes thanks to organisational and marketing innovations and less on the production and exploitation of new knowledge.
However, Greece is well placed regarding scientific production, reaching close to the average EU figures: 438 co-publications per million population against 491 for the EU average. Reinforcing this indicator, Greece is above the average in the scientific publications within the top 10% most cited publications worldwide as a percentage of total scientific publications of the country.
These two results indicate that Greek research is of a good degree of quality and show a considerable achievement given the lower share of Greek researchers.
