The Academic Research Enterprise within the Industrialized Nations: Comparative Perspectives (1990)

Summary: National policies and programs for scientific and technological research are increasingly formulated within an international context. Research decisions made within any one nation rapidly influence research agendas worldwide. As a consequence, scientists, engineers, administrators, and policy-makers in government, universities, and industry require better understanding of the research system of other nations. Many challenges now confront the research community as a whole. Advances in fundamental knowledge are becoming more relevant to national economic competitiveness. Global problems such as ozone depletion and acid rain require international collaboration in many fields. At the same time, expensive new scientific equipment escalates the costs of research and in several countries there is a narrowing pipeline of new scientists and engineers. Each nation is responding to these challenges differently, and a comparison of those responses is the basis for this symposium report.