Integration between scientific communities within the European Research Area (ERA) is supposed to tackle the societal grand challenges and generate a growing social and economic impact. Research funding schemes like the ‘joint Research and Development (R&D) programmes’ – such as ERA-Net programmes, Joint Programming Initiatives, Joint Technology Initiatives – established through multilateral agreement between research organizations from different countries, are examples of how European integration can be pursued. In order to monitor and analyse the transnational cooperation within the ERA in all disciplinary fields, RISIS includes the JoREP database, a collection of data on joint R&D programmes and the funding agencies managing them.
RISIS-JoREP 2.0 allows understanding and interpreting the strategies adopted by the different actors involved in joint R&D programmes, concerning how to establish, manage and implement them. Potential users of the database include the scholars in Science and Innovation studies and all the researchers interested in the study of the Europeanisation of research activities and the dynamics related to transnational R&D funding.
The current version of the database covers data for the period 2000-2014, with a specific focus on 2013 and 2014. It stores information on 152 programmes, covers 32 countries for European-level programmes and provides a table of indicators at the country level to perform spatial and network analyses.
JoREP 2.0 provides multifaceted representations of the organisational and financial characteristics of joint R&D programmes: “Information on the organisational features of these peculiar research funding instruments and the respective financial data can be used to understand modes of relationship between the European actors involved in transnational research cooperation, and to analyse the levels of budget mobilization and concentration over the years” says Andrea Orazio Spinello, researcher at Cnr-Ircres and co-creator of JoREP 2.0 database.
Monitoring investments in joint R&D programmes points out the policy rationales behind them and their impact: “Analysing the integration of research activities at European level developed through the establishment of transnational R&D programmes can shed light on the effect of joint schemes of research funding in the Europeanisation of the research activities“, says Spinello.
