Ebook: Mapping Research and Innovation in the State of Israel

Mapping Research and Innovation in the State of Israel is the fifth of a series of country profiles prepared
by UNESCO’s Global Observatory of Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Instruments (GOàSPIN).
The series is designed to expose – through the rigorous application of an assessment lens—usable insights
about science, technology, engineering and innovation (SETI) policies and their context. The GOàSPIN
programme is helping Member States to reform and upgrade national science systems and governance. It
promotes building capacity to monitor and evaluate the policy performance, through a structural analysis
(covering the explicit policy, the SETI national ecosystem, the legal framework and operational policy
instruments), because such analysis points to implicit policies and gaps, and situates the performance of
Israel’s policy. In this way, the scope of standard SETI assessment can be widened, to take into account
country-specific contexts, as well as emerging knowledge of technological advances that contribute to
sustainable development. While complementing efforts to promote evidence-based SETI policy-making
as well as efforts to evaluate policy performance, GOàSPIN offers a good baseline for the promotion of
scientific and technological foresight studies.
The present country profile is the result of a very synergistic collaboration between the Samuel Neaman
Institute (SNI) for National Policy Research (Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa) and UNESCO’s
Division of Science Policy and Capacity Building (Paris) at the invitation of the Israel Academy of Sciences
and Humanities (IASH). IASH played a fundamental role enabling the participation of the most important
SETI stakeholders in Israel and creating a very fruitful co-operation environment.
This country profile is an attempt to systematize the different dimensions of SETI policy in Israel from the
late 1960s to present. It compiles statistical information as well as presenting inventories of the fundamental
instruments in order to create a reliable framework for policy analysis.
The volume is organized so as to present the following items: (a) a long-term description of the political,
economic, social, cultural and educational contextual factors; (b) a study of R&D and innovation indicators;
(c) a long-term scientometric analysis of scientific publications, patents, trademarks and utility models; (d)
a historical background to SETI policies in Israel, (e) a description of the SETI policy cycle; (f) a standard
content analysis of the explicit SETI policies, (f) a complete analysis of the SETI organizational chart at five
different levels (policy-making level; promotion level; research and innovation execution level; scientific
and technological services level and evaluation level); (g) an inventory of all the SETI government bodies
and organizations related to research and innovation activities and to science and technology services; (h)
an inventory of the SETI legal framework, including acts, bills, regulations and international agreements;
(i) a standard inventory with 18 different analytic dimensions of all the SETI operational policy instruments
which are in operation and (j) an analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) of
the country’s research and innovation landscape.