Publications & Documents

This report analyses academic research careers, with a focus on the 'research precariat', defined as postdoctoral researchers holding fixed-term positions without permanent or continuous employment prospects. It identifies policies and practices that aim to improve researchers’ well-being, develop more diverse, equitable and inclusive research systems, attract and retain the best talent in academia, and ultimately improve the quality of science. The report presents a conceptual framework and synthesis of available data and policy information. It draws on a survey of OECD countries that included country notes and interviews with policy officials, funders, representatives of research performing organisations and researchers. It offers recommendations and a set of policy options to improve working conditions and professional development, better link funding to human resource policies, make governance more inclusive, promote equal opportunities and diversity, improve human resource management, promote inter-sectoral and international mobility, and develop the evidence base on research careers.

This report analyses policies and research funding mechanisms designed to foster high-risk high-reward (HRHR) research, and explores promising practices for fostering HRHR research in a variety of contexts. The underlying concern is that failure to encourage and support research on risky, ‘out-of-the-box’ ideas may jeopardise a country’s longer-term ability to compete economically, harness science for solving national and global challenges, and contribute to the progress of science as a whole. The analysis in this paper is primarily based on a survey of individual HRHR research funding schemes in different countries, complemented by targeted interviews. This survey was supplemented by an analysis of HRHR research-oriented programmes and by the feedback from an international workshop that included all relevant stakeholders.

As the United Nations Decade on Ocean Science for Sustainable Development begins, this paper explores recent and likely future digital technologies - especially in the field of ocean observation - that will contribute to ocean sustainability. It examines advances that could lead to substantial improvements in the data collection and analysis of the impact of climate change and human activity on marine ecosystems, while also contributing to the monitoring and reduction of the ecological footprint of ocean-related economic activity. The paper also provides preliminary reflections on how the COVID-19 pandemic might affect digitalisation in the ocean economy, and what strategies could help support ocean research and innovation during and after the crisis.

This work proposes an experimental methodology to identify and measure artificial intelligence (AI)-related trademarks. It aims to shed light on the extent to which (new) companies and products appearing on the market rely on, exploit or propose AI-related goods and services, and to help identify the companies and organisations that are active in the AI space. The paper finds evidence that AI-related goods and services have expanded in consumer markets in recent years. Companies and other economic agents appear to register AI-related trademarks primarily to protect computer-related products and/or services, especially software, audio-visual devices and for analytical purposes. Important trademark activities related to AI also emerge in the education space, with AI-related keywords being frequently associated with educational services as well as classes, publications, workshops and online material.

Biorefineries present an alternative to fossil-based production, and can create employment, wealth and the ecosystem needed to make them function. Thailand is establishing a bioeconomy with widespread biorefining as a strategy for future economic growth. There is political will to establish in Thailand, if feasible, small, decentralised biorefineries to which farmers can locally deliver biomass as feedstock, which can then be processed into bio-based products. This would help to relieve rural poverty, which is still a problem in some areas of Thailand despite progress. Developing a biorefining roadmap will help to assess the feasibility of such an initiative.

This work proposes an analysis of the statistical properties and distributional characteristics of Burning Glass Technologies’ (BGT) data on online job openings from platforms and companies, at the occupation level. BGT data are compared to official data on employment by occupation to assess their occupation-specific representativeness. This work further proposes weighting schemes aimed at making BGT-based analysis fully representative at the occupation and country levels, where appropriate. The analysis encompasses six economies – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States – for the period 2010-19. Overall, it finds that BGT data exhibit good statistical properties and are a useful source of timely information about labour market demand, especially for high-skill occupations and recruitment processes that are more likely to happen online.