The UIS has launched its 2017 Research and Experimental Development (R&D) Statistics Survey to collect a wide range of data for the reference year 2016, including key indicators to monitor international and national goals related to science.

As part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), countries have pledged to “build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation”. In particular, SDG target 9.5 calls upon them to encourage innovation and substantially increase the number of researchers, as well as public and private spending on R&D.

The UIS is responsible for producing two key indicators to monitor progress towards this target: R&D expenditure as a proportion of GDP and researchers per million inhabitants. These indicators are based on the data collected through the UIS survey and agreements with partners, such as Eurostat, OECD, and RICYT.

The UIS survey (see the questionnaire) will collect a wide range of data on the financial and human resources devoted R&D, such as expenditure disaggregated by sector of performance, source of funds, and fields of R&D as well as the characteristics and qualifications of researchers.

Country-level data and indicators from the survey will be released by the UIS through its international database, visualization tools and fact sheets. In addition, UIS data will be featured in the many global indices, reports and databases such as the SDG indicator database of the United Nations Statistics Division.  

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