Philipp Raoul Brugner

With the worldwide outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are experiencing intense competition between global players as to who can best contain the crisis and who is a reliable international partner in the global fight against the coronavirus and the economic and social consequences it causes. The EU appears to have been disqualified in that game of rivalry right from the start due to its lack of internal coordination and solidarity. After a moment of shock, however, the EU now seems to have gathered steam in terms of globally engaging against the coronavirus crisis and could outpace its main competitors such as China and Russia. Now, more than two months after the crisis started to severely hit also the EU with Italy as the first member state in its epicentre, there is accumulating evidence to prove this fact: Increasing investments in research and development, an active science diplomacy and fast, but also sustainable reactions in the field of development cooperation. However, existing resources in development cooperation do not suffice to overcome the full scale of this global crisis, which demands more than health supply and economic aid. More farsighted approaches, that forward the long-term goals for social, ecological and ecomic recovery after the crisis, and an improved information policy with stronger public relations will be necessary for the EU so that it can reliably maintain its position as the most important and partnership-oriented partner for Africa and its Eastern neighbourhood.

This innovation guide presents short descriptions of the various innovation stimulation instruments available in the Russian Federation today, as well as some important elements of the legal framework for innovation activities in Russia. For several years Russian research and innovation policy has strived to put in place a support chain for stimulating innovation activities. Key words such as innovation lift or development institutes have become common in the related policy debate and in the communication towards the target group of innovation policy as well as also towards the general public. A brief description of the current state of the innovation system and the legal framework conditions for innovation cooperation will lead to the description of the support instruments.

This analysis elaborates dimensions of the bi-regional S&T cooperation between EU Member States and Associated Countries to the Framework Programme 7 (EU28/AC) and Ukraine, bringing one specific dimension of bi-regional cooperation into focus: co-publications between at least one author affiliated with an institution in EU28/AC and one author affiliated with an institution in Ukraine. Co-publications are used as a proxy for the assessment of – and are, at the same time, an indicator for – research cooperation. Thus, the analysis of EU-Ukrainian co-publications serves to monitor and to assess the impact of joint EU and Ukrainian RTD cooperation. It further aims at identifying recent trends in academic cooperation between EU and Ukraine as well as pointing to emerging topics in RTD cooperation.
This deliverable monitors and analyses research cooperation expressed in co-publications and as such supports the overall BILAT-UKR*AINA objective by providing analytical input feeding the institutional dialogue on STI policy between the European Commission, the EU 28/AC and Ukraine (in particular the dialogue at the Joint S&T Cooperation Committee).

The objective of this deliverable of Danube-INCO.NET is to capture and analyse co-publications and co-patents among countries in the Danube Region 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. Consequently, the analysis covers the amount of co-publications and co-patents per country and their development over time (2003-2013). In addition to presenting thematic and geographic patterns in scientific cooperation (using scientific co-publications as an indicator), the bibliometric analysis takes into account the impact in terms of number of citations. The co-patenting analysis takes into account patterns of foreign ownership as well as co-inventorship, thematic patterns, and developments over time (2003-2013).

This paper aims to critically review the currently established monitoring processes of regional smart specialisation strategies (S3) and to discuss critical issues and potential approaches for ex-post evaluations of these strategies. Based on a the state of affairs analysis of Austrian regional innovation strategies and existing monitoring mechanisms, as well as of best practice examples of Emilia Romagna (IT), Aquitaine (FR) and Galicia (ES), different approaches to monitoring in European regions are discussed. From the strategic approaches present in these regions, their existing monitoring mechanisms and the lessons learnt from evaluating previous regional innovation strategies, we will draw conclusions for the evaluation of S3 strategies. Given the political and economical relevance of S3 and the fact that more than 200 S3 strategies have been developed, the paper will contribute to monitoring and evaluation governance of regional research and innovation systems.