Address by Dr Jimmy Devins TD Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation at the Irish Universities Association Research Information Systems Conference

Thursday 4 September 2008

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen,

I wish to thank Dr Celia Gallagher, and her colleagues in the Irish Universities Association, for organising today’s conference on research information systems. It is very heartening to see so many speakers coming to Ireland to share their experiences on this topic and I wish to extend a very warm Irish welcome - Céad Míle Fáilte - to all of you.

Science, Technology and Innovation is vital to our economic and social progress. In an increasingly globalised world, it is recognised that high levels of investment in research and innovation are essential, both for economic competitiveness, and to yield innovations. For that reason, the Irish Government, through its Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation (SSTI) 2006-2013, has placed Research and Development at the heart of our economic development effort.

Growing research capability is a core component of the European Union's drive to become the most competitive and dynamic, knowledge-driven economy. Ireland has fully embraced that challenge and the SSTI represents our comprehensive plan to guide us towards that goal.

Under the SSTI, we have set ourselves a goal to see Ireland become a leader in research, development and innovation. The strategy is based on a shared vision of placing Ireland firmly on the global map in terms of the excellence of our research and its application for the benefit of society.

The objective of the SSTI is to provide the opportunity to achieve convergence, coherence and synergy in our national innovation system. The current National Development Plan provides for an investment of €8.2 billion in technology, innovation and scientific research over the period 2007 to 2013. €3.4 billion of this will be invested in enhancing world-class research in our higher education institutes.

Innovation can be defined as the process that transforms ideas into commercial value. Innovation in business is achieved in many ways, with much attention now given to formal R&D for "breakthrough innovations." But innovations may be developed by less formal on-the-job modifications of practice, through exchange and combination of professional experience, and by many other routes. It is crucial to many companies searching for sustainable and increased profits.

Innovation is a central element of many policies to increase competitiveness at corporate and national levels. The more radical and revolutionary innovations tend to stem from R&D, while more incremental innovations may emerge from practice. Innovation is pivotal to economic development and economic success is increasingly based on knowledge creation and exploitation rather than the availability of physical resources such as raw materials.

The question then arises “how does one translate the innovations that stem from R&D and exploit them for the sake of national competitiveness?” Since Research and Development is pivotal to the development of the innovative society, there must be some means of identifying the research that is ongoing and the new, emerging areas. This, in turn, poses the question “How does one access the knowledge base required to innovate?”

In order to answer this question and to meet the objectives of the SSTI, we must classify and identify the research being conducted in Irish third level institutions and research establishments, and make it available to Irish enterprises and other social sectors for their use. These enterprises must also have the ability to access and exploit other innovative ideas that exist in the third level institutes.

I am pleased to report that good progress is being made in meeting this challenge. In the development of an all island research portal expertiseireland.com, all third level institutions on this island have agreed a common data format for describing the research output of their staff. This was achieved by the design and installation of common or compatible knowledge management systems across the sector, a process which has taken ten years to complete.

The expertiseireland.com website acts as a unique gateway to this knowledge base, by providing a mechanism to identify current research areas and support mechanisms for commercial and social exploitation. The expertiseireland.com portal also represents an important national resource of data, capable of feeding into initiatives such as benchmarking exercises, or bibliometric analysis.

The value of expertiseireland.com has been affirmed by an international peer review process, which resulted in the IUA securing funding from the Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) for a project to provide open access to research papers of university researchers, which would use expertiseireland.com as a national access point.

This national research platform will provide a one stop shop to showcase and disseminate Irish publicly funded research to national and global audiences. Trinity College Dublin has already made their research output available on expertiseireland.com and the remainder of the higher education sector is in the process of making their research output available to the world.

For the first time, Irish research will be freely available worldwide. This access will ensure Irish research has a greater impact, by significantly increasing the visibility of Irish research, and the concomitant increased citations and awareness. It will also ensure that universities can preserve research in digital format to international standards.

In addition, this national research platform will provide information on citations and international peer review ranking of the R&D Investment to date. The recent Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Value for Money report has indicated that SFI funding has coincided with an increase in publication productivity levels of researchers. The report also indicated that any significant discontinuation or reduction in SFI supports could adversely affect the build-up of research capacity in Ireland achieved to date, which is needed to maintain our national competitiveness.

The SSTI has highlighted the need for Ireland to strengthen our national research infrastructure, through linking our research system to centres of excellence internationally, and fostering partnerships through involvement in international research teams. Ireland is currently a participant in many of the key networks and programmes at European level including the EU Framework Programmes.

It is essential that Ireland moves forward in building its international collaborative networks in science. However, it is also important to make these investments in a way that produces the greatest economic benefits to Ireland.

Focusing on investments with the strongest payoffs to technology based business and economic development, as well as benefits for researchers and the culture of science, would appear to make most sense.

International collaboration brings benefits to Irish scientists in both the academic arena and companies. Quality standards are driven upwards and engagement with best practice ensures that industries compete at the cutting edge of technology, ensuring optimisation of returns to investment.

The dynamic of international competition in the sciences has stepped up over recent years, in particular for leading researchers. At the same time, the inter-dependence of the various elements of the global science system is increasing, given the complexity of the problems being addressed, the scale of investment required and the pervasive mobility of researcher careers.

The relatively small scale of the Irish science and technology base means that much of what is being achieved in terms of Irish research is relatively unknown internationally. The National Research Platform will ensure that the strong research message emerging from the island of Ireland is coherent, innovative and forward looking.

This conference provides us with a perfect opportunity to review best practice on research information systems in Europe. So, without further ado, let us now begin our work and start to learn from the experience of our European colleagues.

Thank you.