The Socio-Economic Importance of Scientific Research To Canada

The Socio-Economic Importance of Scientific Research to Canada Page 46© David A. Wolfe and Ammon Salterthe research produced in this case. But exactly the opposite is true! Using bibliometricmeasures of the number of scientific papers produced in different countries and the number oftimes that the papers of one country are cited by researchers in other countries provides arough gauge for judging the quality of the scientific output in individual countries. Thesemeasures should be treated with some caution as bibliometrics remains an imperfect science atbest, and these results can only be taken as a rough indication of the quality of the scientificoutput. With this qualification in mind, Peter Macklem, the head of one of the federal Centresof Networks of Excellence suggests that four metrics can be used to evaluate the quality of ourscientific output in relation to that of other countries: the productivity of Canadian research canbe measured by the number of scientific publications per capita; the scientific impact of thatresearch can be judged by the average number of times a publication is cited by other scientistsmultiplied by the number of publications per capita; the scientific efficiency of our researcheffort can be judged in terms of the number of publications per dollar spent on research; andfinally, effectiveness is the number of citations per dollar spent on R&D. According to hisestimates, Canada ranks first in research productivity, efficiency and effectiveness among theG-7 countries and is second only to the US in impact (1995). These estimates are confirmed ina recent publication of Science magazine in the UK (May 1997). It appears that Canada isreceiving more than fair value for our investment in basic scientific research!CONCLUSION: TOWARDS A NEW APPROACHThe evidence presented in this report confirms the idea that talk of a knowledge–basedeconomy is more than just a convenient turn of phrase. Government–funded basic research isa critical source of investment for developing a society's learning capabilities. Governmentfunding expands the technological opportunities available for firms to draw upon as they goabout developing new products and processes. It supports the training of students, who uponentering industry, transfer their skills and knowledge about science and technology into theprivate sector. Given the localized nature of the innovation process, government support forbasic research fosters the creation of dynamic agglomerations of firms around centres of highereducation and it sustains the growth of untraded interdependencies among these parts of theinnovation system.The empirical evidence as to the directly measurably benefits of this investment has provendifficult for economists and students of science and technology to construct. Econometricapproaches often fail to account for the heterogeneity of the innovation process. Recentsurveys have highlighted the variety of actors and relations in the innovation system, but donot offer detailed analysis of particular technologies. Case studies point to the complexity of46