• ARTICLE COUNT (AC): 3,275

  • FRACTIONAL COUNT (FC): 1,377

  • WEIGHTED FRACTIONAL COUNT (WFC): 1,091

Change and upheaval were the two main forces at work in this region in 2014. To the south, Greek scientists hope for positive outcomes from the election of the new anti-austerity government. To the east, Russia's science is still in turmoil in the wake of economic sanctions, while its funding structure is undergoing reform. Despite this, the country still led the region in 2014 as measured by the Nature Index's weighted fractional count (WFC). Overall, as with last year's Index, the regional output is heavily dominated by the physical sciences, reflecting the emphasis placed on military and applied science by the former communist regimes, and the effects of ideology on life science research.

Maintaining second place in the region and 24th globally by WFC is Poland, the 7th largest economy in the European Union (EU), and one of its fastest growing. Poland comes second in the region (behind Russia) in physical sciences and chemistry WFCs and second in life sciences (after Hungary). Like other countries in the region, Poland also scores highly on collaborativeness; with 60% of its output coming from international collaborative efforts it far surpasses the United States (26%), Germany (47%) and the United Kingdom (50%) in forming international collaborations.

Poland is still working to reform its academic and research institutions, and to increase the economic impact of its scientific efforts. To these ends, three key policy developments have taken place in the past year, says Maciej Żylicz, president of the not-for-profit Foundation for Polish Science. The first is a drive to improve research quality, by changing how institutions will be assessed. “The system is very flat at the moment,” says Żylicz. “Poland would like to give more money to the best institutions.” As of January 2015, the government is making its funding decisions based entirely on performance.

The second big development is opening up Poland's R&D infrastructure to make it more international. That entails attracting students from abroad, changing the law to make it easier to appoint foreign nationals to academic posts and making the appointment process more open to competition. Thirdly, the government is trying to forge links between science and business, with a new law being passed that offers firms tax breaks to invest in R&D. The private sector currently accounts for about a third of Poland's R&D effort, says Żylicz. “If we can achieve 50:50, this will be a big achievement.”

According to Eurostat, the EU's statistical office, Poland's 2013 R&D spend remained static at US$3.66 billion, which represents a slight fall as a percentage of GDP from 0.9% in 2012 to 0.87% in 2013, one of the lowest in the EU. The government is, however, committed to raising this to 2% of GDP by 2020, says Żylicz. This means it will have to boost spending by between 10 and 15% per year; the increase for 2015 will be 10%. “We are on a good track,” says Żylicz. Funding is also being directed to help Polish scientists compile grant applications for Horizon 2020, the EU's research and innovation programme that will offer nearly US$85 billion of funding between 2014 and 2020.

Checking funding shortfalls

Third in the region, and 27th globally is the Czech Republic, whose 2014 WFC was 6.7% higher than in 2013. Like several of its neighbours, the Czech Republic's output is dominated by physics and chemistry — with 38.1% and 48.2% of its WFC — and these results reflect the country's historical strengths in these fields.

In 2013, the Czech Republic spent US$3.2 billion on R&D, or 1.91% of its GDP, a slight increase over the 1.88% of 2012. This reflects a general stagnation that has taken place since 2010. The period between 2000 and 2009 was a golden era for Czech science, when the government increased funding by about 10% each year, says Václav Hořejší, director of the Institute of Molecular Genetics in Prague, and one of five scientists advising the Czech Prime Minister on science and higher education policy. Since then, although the government has maintained an annual spend of about US$1.07 billion, this represents a decrease in real terms. Worst affected is the Czech Academy of Sciences, whose funding has fallen by some 10% from its 2009 level, says Hořejší.

The government-funding shortfall is currently being offset by money from EU regional development funds. From 2007 to 2015, US$2.13 billion has been invested, mainly in building new research facilities. These include six European centres of excellence and 40 regional centres for research and development. One example is BIOCEV, the Biotechnology and Biomedicine Centre of the Academy of Sciences and Charles University in Vestec. Set to open in September 2015, it will house 400 researchers and five state-of the-art core facilities. “This is a large-scale activity that will probably greatly change the basic landscape of Czech science,” says Hořejší. The future support and sustainability of these new research infrastructures remains under discussion.

Small but strong

Estonia, with only 1.3 million people, punches above its weight in science. Its WFC for 2014 was 22, an increase of 68% compared with 2013. This is one of the largest WFC increases in the region.

In 2014, Estonia led the region in the proportion of its output published in Nature and Science — 5% of its WFC, compared to the global aggregate of 3.1%. This included a study in Nature about interacting genes in humans. Russia had more papers in these journals (33), but that represented only 1.2% of its WFC. Estonia published 12 articles in Nature and Science in 2014, the same number as its larger neighbours Poland (12 papers, 0.6% WFC) and Hungary (12 papers, 2.0% WFC).

Cryogenic facilities at BIOCEV in the Czech Republic provide cell-line storage for biomedical research. Credit: BIOCEV

Estonia is often held up as an example of how shrewd planning, tough reform and a robust R&D political framework can transform a country's science base. In the early 1990s, Estonia rearranged its whole research system according to the western model, with its new funding system emphasizing research excellence and competition. In 2001, the country set up a Centres of Excellence in Research programme to promote productivity and international competitiveness, which established 22 centres over successive phases.

The government continues to prioritize R&D funding, says Indrek Reimand, Deputy Secretary for Higher Education and Research at Estonia's Ministry of Education and Research. In 2013, Estonia spent 1.73% of its GDP on R&D. While this is lower than the EU average of 2.2%, government R&D spending tripled between 2001 and 2007, and then doubled between 2007 and 2013, making its R&D spending growth one of the fastest in the world, says Reimand. Over the past decade, Estonia has also invested heavily in its science infrastructure, refurbishing labs and buildings, and between 2007 and 2013 invested some US$426 million of EU structural funds in R&D capacity. A quarter of the funding was earmarked for human resource development, such as doctoral training and schemes to promote transnational mobility for researchers and students.

Institutions moving up

Universities cannot cover all needs without worldwide networking.

For individual institutions, the Nature Index reveals that scientists at the University of Tartu coauthored 10 of Estonia's 12 Nature and Science papers. Several of these involved large, international genomics projects. This reflects the university's policy of developing collaboration partners to create an internationally competitive research infrastructure in genomics and biotechnology, says Marco Kirm, vice rector for Research at the University of Tartu. A cornerstone of this effort is the Geenivaramu, the Estonian Biobank, which is a comprehensive collection of genetic and health information covering 5% of the country's population. It draws collaborators from around the world, such as those involved in identifying genes associated with common diseases. “Universities cannot cover all needs — to have people with advanced knowledge — without worldwide networking,” Kirm says.

The Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, which incorporates 54 research institutes, comes third in the region (after the Russian Academy of Science and the Polish Academy of Science). Its output is heavily skewed toward chemistry (47.6% WFC) and physics (40.2%). Among this region's top institutions, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences puts most emphasis on the life sciences, which accounts for 36.4% of it WFC.

Some commentators see the region catching up with world leaders. Hořejší says, “I think some of our best research institutions are now fully comparable to the good ones in Western Europe.”