Developing and using indicators of multilateral S&T cooperation for policymaking: The experience from European research programmes

As European Union research programmes play an increasingly important role w ithin the research and innovation systems of Member States, the need for ap propriate indicators to grasp and analyze this collaborative phenomenon has in recent years become obvious. Such indicators are becoming essential dec ision-making tools for science policy makers at the national level. EU scie nce policy responds to not one but a number of objectives, while one countr y or one laboratory's participation in European S&T cooperation is likely t o manifest a number of particularities, and be quite different from another 's. Such a complex system makes it possible to elaborate a large variety of indicators. This article proposes several possible types of indicators and shows how they could be useful for weighing research policy strategies at the national and European levels.