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ANALYTICAL EVIDENCY ON RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN THE DANUBE REGION” (WP4) – AVAILABLE RESULTS

Danube-INCO.NET has one work package dedicated to “Analytical Evidency on Research and Innovation in the Danube Region” (WP4) and prepares reports throughout its lifetime to provide analytical evidence for research and innovation (R&I) policy making in the region.

The focus was kept open to all scientific fields for duly monitoring current research cooperation activities. A study that scrutinises both the co-publications and the co-patents in Danube Region Countries (DRC) and the Western Balkan countries (WBC) for the years of 2003-2013 was delivered in order to provide a solid base for the identification of intra-regional thematic strengths and collaboration patterns, to bring to the fore the most active players, centres of excellence, and existing “hot” links between R&I institutions.  In general, the DRC’s share of international co-publications is between 40-50 %. Smaller countries tend to have a higher share, which is not surprising. Moreover, the share of intra-regional co-publication activity in the region’s overall co-publication activity is also between 40-50 %. The analysis of the thematic areas of co-publications revealed a focus on Physics & Astronomy, Chemistry, Biomedical Research. The region’s patent application output is comparatively strong in the ‘mechanical engineering’, textiles, ‘operations and transport’ and, to some degree, the ‘fixed constructions’ area.

In parallel, another analysis of R&I projects in the region was carried out as for those initiatives with a trasferability potential for the Danube Region. In such a context 245 results of 75 EU projects funded in the period 2007 – 2013 were described in four main areas: 1) cluster development; 2) techology transfer; 3) financing mechanisms and tools; 4) non-financing methods and tools for supporting research and innovation. The objective has eventually been the selection of most relevant success stories with significant relevance for transferring know-how, methods, schemes and tools to the Danube Region in implementation of research and innovation strategies and targets set on the macro-regional level. For the time being the whole report is accessible at the link above, however all projects and results will be shortly available also as online catalogue.

Finally, the Danube-INCO.NET team has recently finalised a report with results from a survey aimed at identifying  those social, political and economic bottlenecks as to S&T cooperation in the Danube region and to put forward corresponding policy recommendations. The main focus of the study is on identification of the factors which hamper the international RTDI cooperation of Danube region countries as well as the differences in perception of barriers between group of countries in the Danube region. The factor analysis resulted in the following classification of barriers: personal barriers; administrative and bureaucratic barriers; institutional support barriers; capacity barriers on the country level; barriers to scientific excellence; socio-cultural and political barriers; and project management barriers. The results revealed the statistically significant difference in the perception of the barriers between groups of countries in the Danube region. Also, the study confirmed a significantly lower extent of participation in international RTDI projects by R&I community in the Enlargement countries compared to the other countries in the Danube region. The study eventually recommends a number of measures to be implemented on the various levels and different stakeholders to overcome barriers and eventually achieve an efficient cooperation among the Danube Region countries.