ReICO is helping to improve the evidence base on research and innovation careers by bringing together previously fragmented data sources, revealing new insights and highlighting critical gaps that continue to limit monitoring and analysis. This chapter presents a forward-looking agenda for closing these gaps and improving the coverage, quality, and comparability of data on research and innovation careers.
Research and Innovation Careers Observatory 2026
Key Indicators on Talent, Mobility and Working Conditions
Abstract
Towards a stronger evidence base on R&I careers
ReICO has shown the value of bringing together fragmented data to better understand research and innovation (R&I) careers, but it has also highlighted important gaps in what can currently be measured. Existing statistics often provide only partial views of the R&I workforce, struggle to track careers over time and across borders, and do not adequately capture the full range of people who contribute to research and innovation. Differences in the structure of national statistical systems, databases and reporting practices further limit international comparability.
Addressing these challenges requires a forward-looking measurement agenda centred on stronger international standards, improved use of administrative and register data, enhanced national data infrastructures, and new evidence sources such as workforce surveys, digital repositories, and data derived from professional networks and job advertisements. These efforts combined can support a more complete, timely and policy-relevant understanding of R&I careers, helping countries make better-informed decisions about developing, attracting and retaining talent.
The previous chapters have presented the main indicator-based findings from the ReICO project to date, illustrating the new insights that can be generated by bringing together and analysing data on the R&I workforce that have in the past been fragmented across national and international repositories. The analysis demonstrates the value of breaking down these data silos and investing in dedicated monitoring of R&I talent and their careers. At the same time, work undertaken through ReICO has revealed important yet actionable gaps in the current national and international evidence base, with several dimensions of R&I careers remaining poorly measured or not measured at all, creating opportunities for new approaches.
This chapter summarises some of the main measurement challenges relating to R&I careers, based on knowledge gained during the first years of operation of the ReICO project. It then sets out future priorities and options for strengthening the measurement of R&I careers across national and international organisations and communities, and the role that ReICO can play in supporting this agenda.
Defining and identifying the R&I workforce
As covered in Chapter 3, a fundamental requirement for monitoring R&I careers is determining who should be considered part of the R&I workforce. Research and innovation systems rely on a diverse range of individuals who contribute to the creation, diffusion and application of knowledge. These include not only researchers, but also engineers, technicians, data specialists, innovation professionals, research managers and various support staff. Many of these roles play an essential part in R&I activities yet are not easily identifiable within existing statistical systems.
Most current measurement approaches rely on educational qualifications, occupational classifications or employment in R&D-performing organisations as proxies for participation in R&I activities. While these approaches provide useful insights, they each capture only part of the workforce and may exclude individuals whose work contributes to innovation outside traditional research settings. Existing occupational classifications often lack the granularity needed to distinguish R&I-related functions consistently, making it difficult to measure the full breadth of talent supporting research and innovation. As a result, countries are better able to monitor specific groups, such as doctorate holders or researchers, than the wider population engaged in R&I activities.
Limited data availability and statistical coverage across countries
Available national data sources often provide only partial coverage of the R&I workforce. ReICO's evidence base relies primarily on international collections relating to education, labour markets and R&D personnel, complemented by dedicated annual data collection from National Contact Points (see Annex A). These sources were not developed specifically to monitor R&I careers and therefore offer only a partial view of the workforce. Some national labour force and education surveys also face limitations in capturing relatively small populations of interest, including doctorate holders, specialised occupations and workers in emerging technology fields. Sample sizes are frequently insufficient to support granular analysis of these groups, particularly in smaller countries.
As a result, the degree to which countries can populate the key indicators assembled through ReICO varies substantially. These differences reflect not only variation in reporting practices but also more fundamental differences in national statistical capacities, data infrastructures and availability of relevant information. Consequently, important policy questions relating to talent pipelines, skills development, diversity and workforce composition often cannot be adequately addressed using conventional statistical sources alone.
Difficulty tracking careers over time and across sectors
Understanding R&I careers requires more than a snapshot of individuals at a particular point in time. R&I personnel often move between sectors, institutions and countries over the course of their careers. Career mobility and transitions are central features of modern R&I systems, yet they remain difficult to monitor systematically. Most internationally comparable indicators are cross-sectional in nature, providing information about stocks, characteristics or outcomes observed at a given moment. They reveal comparatively little about how individuals move through education, research, innovation and employment systems, or how careers evolve. As a consequence, policymakers often lack information on key issues such as transitions between academia and industry, international mobility, retention of skilled personnel, or exits from research careers into other innovation-related activities.
As discussed later in this chapter, some countries have begun to address these limitations through linked administrative datasets and longitudinal tracking systems that connect educational, employment and income records. Such approaches demonstrate the significant potential of administrative data for monitoring career trajectories, but their implementation remains uneven and extensive gaps persist within national evidence bases on career transitions and trajectories of R&I personnel.
Weak international comparability
Differences in national definitions, classifications, institutional arrangements and reporting practices can affect both the availability and interpretation of international indicators related to R&I careers. International statistical collections can play a vital role in promoting comparability by providing common concepts and reporting frameworks. However, knowledge gathered through the ReICO project demonstrates that important challenges remain for countries to contribute data to such collections. In some areas, internationally comparable data are available for only a limited number of countries or cover only certain dimensions of R&I careers. Further information on ReICO key indicator coverage across countries is provided in Annex A.
The growing use of administrative records, digital data and other novel sources creates additional harmonisation challenges. Although these sources offer opportunities to improve timeliness, coverage and analytical depth, they also increase the need for common methodologies and reporting guidance. Strengthening international comparability will therefore require continued collaboration among national authorities, statistical agencies and international organisations to develop shared approaches that reflect the evolving nature of R&I careers and the expanding range of data sources available to monitor them.
Addressing the challenges outlined above through a new measurement agenda is a core objective of ReICO. Building on the findings presented throughout this report, as well as ongoing exchanges with National Contact Points, policymakers, researchers and other stakeholders, the project has identified a number of priority areas where improvements in measurement could generate substantial benefits (Figure 5.1). While some of these priorities concern strengthening existing official statistics, others require the development of novel methodologies, new streams of evidence and responsible use of non-official data sources.
Source: Authors’ elaboration.
No single data source can satisfy all information needs relating to R&I careers. Different policy questions require different forms of evidence. Administrative data may be well suited to tracking labour market outcomes over time, while surveys can provide insights into experiences, perceptions and aspirations. Similarly, digital traces of scientific activity, professional networking platforms and online job advertisements can offer perspectives that are difficult to obtain from conventional statistical sources. The overarching objective of ReICO is to progressively develop a more coherent and complementary measurement ecosystem capable of addressing the wide range of policy and analytical questions that arise in relation to R&I careers. The priorities below highlight areas where national governments, international organisations, stakeholders and the wider R&I community can work collectively to improve the coverage, granularity, quality and timeliness of data needed to monitor R&I careers and inform policy.
Strengthening the foundations for improved measurement
Progress in measuring R&I careers depends on strengthening the case for investment in data and statistics within national administrations which in turn supports continued international collaboration to develop the shared concepts, methodologies, and reporting frameworks needed to produce meaningful and comparable evidence across countries. Although many science ministries have dedicated units responsible for R&I data and policy reporting, the value of investing in R&I workforce measurement across government, or of adopting regulatory frameworks that support it, is not always self-evident. Advancing measurement requires a strong and clear business case for both the production of data and statistics and their use in decision-making.
Statistical resources within national administrations are limited, and governments understandably tend to prioritise data on groups facing the most challenging social and labour market situations, such as the low-skilled or the unemployed. Highly qualified professionals working in high-demand fields may, by contrast, appear to need relatively little policy attention, and by extension little measurement effort. This view overlooks the substantial public investment made in the R&I workforce, both directly (for example, through funding for doctoral training, research, and researchers), and indirectly through policies and financial incentives aimed at attracting and retaining talent for R&I systems. The effectiveness of these investments cannot be adequately assessed using data that are infrequent, highly aggregated, or insufficiently timely.
Yet, some countries’ experience suggests that improving measurement need not always require major new investments. Information gathered in the ReICO project to date shows that many countries have been able to make progress on measurement at relatively modest cost. Through documenting and highlighting these experiences, ReICO can continue to support science ministries and public authorities in making the business case for strengthening measurement and monitoring of research careers.
At the same time, strengthening national measurement efforts requires a stronger international framework to support comparability and coherence. International statistical standards have played a central role in enabling comparable measurement of R&D activities for more than six decades, notably through the Frascati Manual. However, existing approaches define personnel categories for the purpose of measuring R&D activity, rather than focusing on their profile and careers within or beyond the confines of R&D activity. Moreover, the traditional classification of R&D personnel into researchers, technicians, and support staff is increasingly recognised as insufficient to capture the diversity and complexity of roles that make up today's R&I career ecosystem.
This situation calls for renewed attention from the international statistical community to co-developing new measurement approaches and associated guidance for national authorities on implementing data collections on R&I personnel. Priorities could include clearer identification of R&I occupations within national and international statistical classifications, common definitions and methods for register-based career tracking, and standardised survey modules on R&I personnel that countries can integrate into existing data collections.
Updating such guidance requires incremental co-development and testing with data producers and users in countries as it evolves, a process that typically requires some years of long-term and persistent coordination. The ReICO project can support this process by providing a platform for methodological experimentation, evidence gathering and international dialogue, helping to refine, test and operationalise new approaches to measuring R&I careers.
Leveraging administrative and register data on the R&I workforce
Administrative and register data offer significant opportunities to improve the measurement of R&I careers. In comparison to surveys, they can provide broader population coverage, support longitudinal analysis and reduce reporting burdens. They are also increasingly important for identifying and monitoring groups that are difficult to capture through traditional statistical sources. However, as discussed, few countries can provide detailed data on the R&I workforce, because of the limited precision of occupational classifications. A second barrier is practical: even if classifications were refined to the extent required to provide granular views of R&I personnel, occupation data must still be recorded accurately and consistently at source in national registers and surveys. In practice, such data is often self-reported or assigned by employers, coded at varying levels of detail, and updated irregularly, limiting its reliability for identifying R&I roles.
Norway provides one example of a country that has made progress on overcoming both barriers, with widespread implementation of occupational variables in national registers combined with the specific identification of researchers in its national occupational classification (Box 5.1). ReICO can support broader progress in this area by working with national authorities, statistical agencies and international organisations to improve the identification of R&I personnel within occupational and administrative data systems. This includes monitoring updates to national occupational classifications, facilitating exchanges on implementation practices, and highlighting country experiences in integrating occupational information into registers and other administrative sources, to support wider adoption of such practices.
Occupation data collected through registers
Norway is an example of a country where occupation data for the employed population are included in administrative registers. Employers report a seven-digit occupational code for each employee through the "a-melding", Norway's common digital reporting system to the tax, welfare and statistical authorities; Statistics Norway converts these detailed codes to the four-digit Norwegian Standard Classification of Occupations (STYRK-08), which is based on the ISCO-08 standard. The occupation code is determined by the employee's actual duties, regardless of their level of education, type of position, salary or industry. The STYRK-08 includes researcher and academic job titles, enabling a finer identification of research occupations than the four-digit international classification allows.
A dedicated Register of Research Personnel
Norway complements this with a dedicated instrument: the Register of Research Personnel (Forskerpersonalregisteret), an individual-level register of all persons participating in R&D at universities, university colleges, health trusts and institute-sector organisations. The register contains information on sex, age, educational background, position and workplace. For universities and university colleges, information is drawn from the national higher education statistics database (DBH); for other institutions it is collected directly from the R&D-performing unit.
Because Norwegian universities and university colleges share a common system of academic position codes ranging from professor, associate professor (førsteamanuensis), postdoctoral fellow, doctoral research fellow (stipendiat) and others, the register also enables analysis of career structures and stages across institutions, supporting the production of statistics on the academic workforce by seniority, gender and field.
Source: Statistics Norway (2026), "Number of employments and earnings", https://www.ssb.no/en/arbeid-og-lonn/sysselsetting/statistikk/antall-arbeidsforhold-og-lonn; Research Council of Norway (2024), "FoU-årsverk og FoU-personale", Indikatorrapporten, https://www.forskningsradet.no/indikatorrapporten.
Building national data infrastructures for monitoring R&I careers
The quality and scope of evidence available on R&I careers ultimately depend on the strength of national data infrastructures with potential to build on and combine the data resources available within national statistical systems, registers and administrative systems. While some countries have developed sophisticated infrastructures that facilitate linking information on education, employment, earnings and research activity, others continue to face significant constraints in developing the data resources needed to monitor workforce participation, career trajectories and employment outcomes.
Strengthening national data infrastructures to support monitoring of R&I careers requires not only investments in data systems and analytical capabilities, but the development of legal, institutional and governance frameworks that enable information from different sources to be linked and used responsibly. Linking education, employment, taxation and social security records often raises complex questions relating to privacy, confidentiality, data governance and access arrangements. The technical work involved in matching records, ensuring data quality and maintaining secure data environments can also require specialist expertise that is not universally available.
Experience across countries indicates, however, that national data infrastructures to monitor R&I careers can be established through a variety of approaches. Several initiatives collected through ReICO illustrate how investments in data infrastructure can substantially improve understanding of educational pathways, labour market outcomes and career trajectories. For example:
In Germany, the recently introduced National Academics Panel Study (NACAPS) surveys both doctoral candidates and doctorate holders at regular intervals, providing both cross-sectional and longitudinal data describing the conditions under which they pursue their doctorates, their completion or discontinuation of doctoral training, career goals and professional development, their general life situation and their outcomes. A first cohort was recruited in 2019 (German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW), n.d.[1]).
In Brazil, the Centre for Management and Strategic Studies (CGEE) maintains a comprehensive database on the country's master's and doctorate holders, published periodically as the Mestres e Doutores study. The most recent edition covers over one million master's graduates and around 320 000 doctorate holders who obtained their degrees in Brazil between 1996 and 2021. Data on graduate programmes and degree recipients from the Sucupira Platform, maintained by the federal agency CAPES, are matched with formal employment records from the Annual Social Information Report (RAIS) of the Ministry of Labour and Employment, enabling detailed analysis of graduates' profiles, employment rates, earnings, sectors of activity and regional distribution (CGEE, 2024[7]).
Canada's Education and Labour Market Longitudinal Platform (ELMLP), launched by Statistics Canada in 2018, takes a relational data approach, allowing anonymised education, apprenticeship and tax records to be combined by researchers, rather than constructing a single database a priori. The Canadian model provides a more flexible infrastructure for researchers and policy analysts to address their own questions on educational pathways and labour market outcomes, under strict confidentiality conditions (Statistics Canada, 2024[2]).
At the international level, the consolidation of graduate tracking within Europe under the European Higher Education Sector Observatory shows how survey-based and administrative approaches can be combined and progressively harmonised across countries (Box 5.2), highlighting the potential of combining national innovations with international collaboration to strengthen evidence on R&I career outcomes. ReICO also serves as a platform for sharing national approaches to addressing legal, technical and data governance challenges. Through this exchange, countries can develop a mutual understanding of the operational, institutional and governance arrangements that support the development of robust data infrastructures for monitoring R&I careers.
Finally, greater availability of dedicated national data infrastructures for tracking labour market outcomes, along with administrative and register data discussed above provides opportunities to modernise international reporting. Knowledge gathered through ReICO on national data systems and reporting arrangements can help streamline its international data collection, reduce reporting burdens and improve the use of official national sources. Looking ahead, ReICO can build on emerging practices across the international statistical community to support more flexible national reporting approaches that accommodate different national data environments and make greater use of multiple data sources where appropriate.
Efforts to strengthen and consolidate graduate tracking are increasingly coordinated at the European level. The EUROGRADUATE survey has been integrated into the European Higher Education Sector Observatory (EHESO), creating opportunities to combine graduate survey evidence with other higher education data and indicators. In parallel, the European Network on Graduate Tracking supports countries in developing more comparable and sustainable graduate-tracking systems through peer learning and methodological cooperation.
A pilot graduate tracking initiative, also part of EUROGRADUATE, exemplifies this new approach. Four countries (Ireland, Italy, Poland and Sweden) are participating in the pilot, which will report on graduate earnings for 1 year and 5 years after graduation, separately for ISCED 6, 7 and 8 graduates, field of education and training, industry sector, and, where possible, mobility status. Data are derived from administrative sources, including social security and education registers. Participating countries are working together to resolve the common challenges that limit international comparability of such data. These include misaligned reference periods, differing definitions of labour market participation, the treatment of multiple qualifications, the consistent identification of graduates across distinct registers, and the handling of graduates who have left the country.
Source: European Commission (2025[3]), European Network of Graduate Tracking, https://education.ec.europa.eu/education-levels/higher-education/relevant-and-high-quality-higher-education/about-relevant-high-quality-higher-education/european-network-of-graduate-tracking
Showcasing evidence on R&I career outcomes from national and institutional initiatives
Through its activities to date, ReICO has identified a diverse range of initiatives undertaken by national authorities, researchers and research-performing organisations to monitor R&I career pathways and outcomes. For example, many higher education institutions and R&D training and performing organisations use internal administrative data not only to track advanced degree graduates and early-career researchers, but also to anticipate future workforce needs, identify structural challenges in research careers, and inform strategic human resource planning. Box 5.3, which describes the case of Turin’s Polytechnic University and its Permanent Observatory for Monitoring the Academic Career Pipeline, exemplifies such initiatives.
In 2021, Politecnico di Torino established a Permanent Observatory for Monitoring the Academic Career Pipeline (Osservatorio permanente di Ateneo per il monitoraggio della filiera accademica) as part of its institutional strategy for workforce planning and research career development. A key purpose of the initiative is to promote a more transparent and sustainable research career structure. The Observatory systematically collects and analyses data on researchers employed under fixed-term arrangements, including research fellowships, research contracts, collaborative research positions, and fixed-term academic appointments. Its objective is to provide a comprehensive picture of the flow of researchers through the university's academic career system, beginning with doctoral training and extending through the early stages of research careers. Beyond descriptive monitoring, the Observatory develops forward-looking scenarios on the future distribution of research personnel. These projections take into account available institutional resources and changes in the regulatory framework, enabling university leadership and departments to make evidence-based decisions regarding academic staffing and recruitment.
Source: Politecnico di Torino (2026[4]), Percorsi e carriere di ricercar, https://www.polito.it/ateneo/lavora-e-collabora-con-noi/percorsi-e-carriere-di-ricerca
While these national, institutional and project-level initiatives generate valuable evidence, their findings are often dispersed across institutions and countries, limiting their visibility, comparability and potential contribution to policy learning and the wider evidence base on R&I careers. To help address this challenge, ReICO has initiated repositories of national and institutional studies, statistics and other resources on R&I careers for participating countries, integrating them into the ReICO online hub. The ReICO repository will be expanded and curated over time to showcase evidence on career pathways and outcomes, providing insights for researchers, institutions, and individuals considering careers in R&I and making national data and project-level evidence on R&I careers more accessible across countries and organisations.
Engaging with the R&I community through surveys of personnel
Official statistics, as discussed earlier, are often too slow to capture emerging developments: by the time data are collected, processed and published, new issues affecting R&I careers may already be well established. Dedicated personnel surveys provide an important complement to official statistics, allowing for more regular pulse-reading of the R&I workforce and the early identification of emerging trends. They can also probe topics that administrative and statistical sources find difficult to cover, such as perceptions, intentions and working conditions. Given these benefits, several national authorities have supported or directly implemented such surveys in recent years.
Surveys of the R&I workforce also form a fundamental part of ReICO and will be carried out at two-yearly intervals over the course of the project. The first such survey, in the field during mid-late-2026, is focused on the R&D workforce and aims to assess respondents’ perceptions of their job quality and working conditions, including contractual arrangements and job security, job satisfaction, career outlook and mobility plans, including intentions to move between countries. This first survey also gathers fine-grained information on job titles and content of R&D jobs, supporting a bottom-up approach to identifying the tasks and roles of R&D personnel rather than the top-down approach that relies on predefined qualification or occupational categories. Non-representative surveys that rely on crowdsourced data entail important methodological trade-offs and limitations. As a result, sustained engagement with the R&I community across countries will be essential to support participation, improve coverage, and demonstrate the usefulness of the resulting evidence for policy and practice.
Future iterations of the ReICO survey will build on lessons learned from previous rounds, as well as experiences gained from comparable national surveys. In turn, ReICO will share its own knowledge gained from running such surveys for the benefit of national authorities.
Developing new R&I career indicators from digital traces of scientific and inventive activity
The data consolidated through ReICO to date comprise snapshot views of the R&I workforce and their outcomes at particular points in time. However, R&I professionals and other highly qualified individuals are a segment of the workforce for which snapshot views may be least informative. Evidence indicates that the R&I workforce is more geographically mobile than other groups, with researchers among the most mobile of all. Indeed, mobility is built into the structure of research careers: researchers are often expected to move between institutions, countries and projects to gain experience and exposure to different research environments, especially at early career stages.
Career trajectories and transitions are therefore at least as important to monitor as stocks, flows and outcomes at a single point in time. Understanding how individuals move between positions, organisations and geographic locations, and how many leave R&I careers altogether, is essential for assessing the extent to which R&I systems are developing and retaining the talent they invest in. Longitudinal approaches, such as tracking individuals through national administrative registers, or panel surveys, can address this need and such approaches should be prioritised within future measurement strategies.
However, administrative registers or panel surveys cannot track R&I personnel moving across international borders and provide very limited data about their profiles and characteristics. Complementary approaches are therefore needed, particularly those capable of tracking individuals across borders. As discussed in Chapter 4, data based on digital traces of scientific and inventive activity offer new possibilities for building up a richer view of career trajectories of some groups of R&I personnel, including tracking their international mobility, which extends such analysis to other inputs, outputs and features of science systems. There has been considerable progress by the STI research community in disambiguating the profiles of scientists and inventors, allowing for more accurate traceability and analysis of geographic mobility and international collaboration. Moreover, new data sources and methods are continuously expanding the possibilities for analysis of research careers using these sources.
A future priority for the ReICO project is to explore how data derived from scientific and inventive activity can be used to develop new international indicators on R&I careers by keeping abreast of developments in the field, engaging with experts and stakeholders on methodological issues and improving understanding of the coverage limitations and biases associated with these data sources.
Harnessing professional network data to broaden measurement of the R&I workforce
To capture the wider R&I workforce, including the technicians and research support staff who rarely appear in publication or patent records, additional sources of information on career trajectories are needed. Professional networking platforms offer opportunities to track the careers and skills of a much broader range of R&I personnel. As members maintain profiles listing their education, employment history, skills and locations, and, in theory, update them as their careers evolve, these platforms have the potential to capture much more timely and granular views of career transitions and international mobility.
Like bibliometric and scientometric data, professional network data also comes with its own limitations. Data are self-reported by users and generally unverified except through, where required by the host platform, basic identity verification, and the broader community-based verification implied by displaying career details publicly and connections to professional contacts. Professional network data also exhibits uneven coverage across countries, sectors and seniority levels, with some countries and types of roles more heavily represented than others. Nevertheless, opportunities to use this data for policy and benchmarking against official sources of information are increasing, driven by more interactions between governments, international organisation and commercial companies through vehicles such as the Development Data Partnership and specific partnership programmes established by the companies themselves to engage with the public sector (Box 5.4).
LinkedIn Economic Graph and Data for Impact programme
The LinkedIn Economic Graph, a digital representation of the global labour market built from the platform's hundreds of millions of member profiles, provides aggregated insights into employment, skills and career flows. Access for research and policy purposes is facilitated through mechanisms such as LinkedIn’s Data for Impact programme, which partners with governments and international organisations to support the provision of policy-relevant indicators based on LinkedIn data. While caveats and limitations must be taken into account, LinkedIn data shows potential to shed light on several aspects of R&I careers, such as the extent to which members move abroad to take up research functions. LinkedIn analysis indicates that members are more likely to move abroad to take up research roles than other types of roles (Figure 5.2)
Source: Data provided by LinkedIn to the OECD Secretariat.
The Development Data Partnership
The Development Data Partnership (DDP), of which the OECD is a member, was established in 2018. It brings international organisations together with private sector companies to facilitate the responsible use of proprietary data for research and development purposes. Partners include the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the OECD, UNDP and several regional development banks, while its commercial partners include technology companies such as LinkedIn, Google, GitHub and Meta. The Partnership addresses practical barriers to using private sector data for public policy: rather than each organisation negotiating separate agreements with each company, a master data licence agreement, a shared proposal-management portal and centralised secure data infrastructure allow approved projects from member organisations to access data quickly and under consistent governance and ethical standards
Source: Development Data Partnership (n.d.[5]), About, https://datapartnership.org/
Tracking labour market demand for R&I personnel
The majority of information currently in ReICO is most relevant for policymakers rather than R&I professionals themselves seeking information on career prospects and outcomes, although (as presented in Chapter 3) the evidence base contains some internationally comparative data on employment outcomes, salaries and resources available across different sectors to support R&I personnel. In the rapidly evolving context of R&I systems, policymakers, along with existing and would-be R&I professionals can benefit from having information on emerging roles and skills required by employers of R&I personnel.
Job advertisement data offers one pathway to support such intelligence-gathering, providing timely, granular insights into the skills, qualifications and roles that employers are actively seeking. Online job advertisements provide one of the most comprehensive and timely sources for comparing labour market demand across countries but require several caveats to be taken into account. Online advertisements are not representative of all vacancies: coverage is skewed towards certain sectors, occupations and countries. Moreover, deduplication of advertisements posted across multiple platforms, extraction and classification of skills and occupations from unstructured text, and inconsistencies in how employers describe similar roles all pose persistent methodological challenges, particularly when seeking to compare demand across countries. Such data should therefore be interpreted as a signal of the relative structure of labour demand, or to identify emerging roles and occupations, rather than as measures of absolute demand or of skill shortages.
Several national and international initiatives already demonstrate the potential of this approach, such as the Skills-OVATE tool developed by the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP) (Box 5.5).
CEDEFOP's Skills-OVATE initiative, drawing on millions of online job advertisements across Europe, aims to provide near real-time intelligence on skills demand by occupation, sector and region. Figure 5.3, based on the Skills OVATE tool, compares relative shares of job advertisements for three groups of occupations particularly relevant for research and innovation systems: researchers and engineers, ICT professionals, and science and engineering technicians. In several countries, according to this data source, these occupations together account for more than one fifth of all advertised vacancies, whereas in others their combined share is considerably smaller. ICT professionals represent the largest component among the three groups in many countries, reflecting, as shown in Chapter 3, their growing importance within the science, engineering and technology workforce.
Still, the balance between occupational groups differs markedly across countries – some countries display a more even distribution between ICT specialists and the other occupation groups. Differences between groups, along with overall collective shares of demand, may reflect national variations in industrial structure as well as the prevalence of manufacturing and high-technology activities within national R&I systems. Future ReICO work could extend the analysis of online job advertisements to a broader range of countries, occupations and sectors, generating more timely and granular insights into evolving demand for research and innovation personnel.
Job advertisements for each role as a share of overall job advertisements for the country, Q2 2025- Q1 2026
Source: Compiled by the authors based on CEDEFOP (2026[6]).
As another example, Jobs and Skills Australia’s Internet Vacancy Index tracks shifts in employer demand and underpins national career guidance resources (Jobs and Skills Australia, 2026[7]). Extending vacancy analysis to R&I specific jobs offers promise for tracking emerging roles, assessing the balance of demand for transversal R&I skills with disciplinary expertise, and supporting individuals to benchmark their profiles against employer expectations across different roles and sectors.
Exploiting job advertisement data is therefore a priority for future development within ReICO. As with professional network data, however, addressing technical challenges will require careful methodological development and validation, and, potentially, partnering with organisations having specialist capabilities and expertise processing and analysing vacancy data.
Monitoring framework conditions for R&I careers
R&I career decisions and outcomes are strongly influenced by the characteristics of institutional and policy environments, or at least by perceptions of them. This warrants efforts to develop internationally comparative indicators on the policy framework conditions and contextual factors that shape R&I careers. Relevant dimensions that might potentially provide a focus for future ReICO measurement efforts include:
comparative data on national public supports for R&I careers, such as the existence of fellowship and grant schemes at different career stages;
national career frameworks and their provisions for progression, evaluation and permanent positions;
qualification recognition and validation requirements, which affect the ease with which individuals can move between countries and sectors;
the characteristics of national research funding programmes, including their duration, portability and eligibility conditions;
access to social protection and employment benefits for R&I personnel, which can differ markedly between those on fixed-term and open-ended contracts, including pension arrangements, parental leave, unemployment insurance and health coverage.
Other indicators of relevance in this domain include wider viewpoints on relative talent attractiveness across countries, such as those produced by the OECD Indicators of Talent Attractiveness (ITA) initiative, which benchmark countries' capacity to attract and retain different types of talented migrants, illustrating how policy settings and broader contextual factors can be combined into internationally comparative indicators (OECD, 2023[8]; OECD, 2023[9]).
As R&I career paths become more diverse, mobile and interconnected, the evidence base must evolve accordingly. No single source or methodology can capture the full complexity of these trajectories, but by combining established statistical approaches with new forms of data and sustained international collaboration, countries can move towards a richer and more nuanced picture of R&I careers. The ReICO project is helping build the foundations for a longer-term international effort to make R&I careers more visible, better understood and ultimately better supported by policy.
References
[6] CEDEFOP (2026), Skills-OVATE- demand for occupations, https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/tools/skills-online-vacancies/markets/occupations-demand.
[5] Development Data Partnership (n.d.), About, https://datapartnership.org/.
[3] European Commission (2025), European Network of Graduate Tracking, https://education.ec.europa.eu/education-levels/higher-education/relevant-and-high-quality-higher-education/about-relevant-high-quality-higher-education/european-network-of-graduate-tracking.
[1] German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW) (n.d.), , https://www.dzhw.eu/en/.
[7] Jobs and Skills Australia (2026), Internet Vacancy Index, https://www.jobsandskills.gov.au/data/internet-vacancy-index (accessed on July 2026).
[8] OECD (2023), Indicators of Talent Attractiveness, https://www.oecd.org/en/data/tools/talent-attractiveness-2023.html. (accessed on July 2026).
[9] OECD (2023), What is the best country for global talents in the OECD?, OECD Publishing, https://doi.org/10.1787/5186ab2d-en.
[2] Statistics Canada (2024), Overview of the Education and Labour Market Longitudinal Platform and Associated Datasets, Statistics Canada, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/37-20-0001/372000012024002-eng.htm.
[4] Torino, P. (2026), Percorsi e carriere di ricerca, https://www.polito.it/ateneo/lavora-e-collabora-con-noi/percorsi-e-carriere-di-ricerca.