New expert panel report concludes that Canadian science world class

Technology seen as weaker

First, the good news. A major report released by the Council of Canadian Academies concludes Canadian S&T is "healthy and growing". The State of Science and Technology in Canada, 2012 ranks the country sixth globally in terms of the frequency of citations for its scientific publications and among the top five countries in seven of 22 fields of research. The more sobering news will arrive next year with a CCA expert panel report on industrial R&D, which will undoubtedly conclude —as Statistics Canada recently reported (see page 3) — that private sector investments in research are continuing to wane.

With just 0.5% of the world's population, Canada produces 4.1% of all scientific papers and nearly 4.7% of the top 1% of most frequently cited papers. That contrasts with Canada's far weaker performance generating patents, which the report found was only 1.7% of global output. What's more, Canada spent $5 billion more in 2010 to access foreign-generated intellectual property than was made from IP generated in Canada.

The gap between papers and patents is viewed as indicative of Canada's weak innovation system, which is plagued by weak capacity for commercializing and marketing homegrown inventions.

"Canada's science and technology enterprise is healthy, growing and internationally competitive," said Dr Eliot Phillipson, chair of the 18-member expert panel and professor of medicine emeritus at the Univ of Toronto and former president and CEO of the Canada Foundation for Innovation. "The world is taking note. Canada is a major player in the premier division of the world's top science league."

This is the second time the CCA has assembled a team of experts to examine Canadian S&T at the behest of Industry Canada, the first being the Council's inaugural expert panel report. While the findings were similar, there are important distinctions both in the findings and the methodology.

In addition to repeating the use of bibliometrics, technometrics and a survey of Canadian S&T experts, the latest expert panel added new metrics including a survey of top-cited international researchers, advanced bibliometrics and an analysis of highly qualified and skilled personnel.

The report found that Canada excelled in six research fields: clinical medicine, historical studies, information and communications technologies, physics and astronomy, psychology and cognitive sciences and visual and performing arts. Of 156 sub-fields examined, Canada ranked #1 in nine, #2 in seven and #3 in 11 (see chart). It also notes that, for the period 2005 to 2010, Canada's ranking in the sub-fields grew more than the G-7 average and production of scholarly papers increased 59%.

Canada's scientific strength is largely based on the expert panel's polling of top-ranked international researchers and their opinion of the quality of Canadian research. It reported that 37% of respondents ranked Canada as "one of the five leading countries in their field in terms of the originality, impact and rigour of its S&T".

Some observers have questioned the validity of employing such a measure. Dr Yves Gingras, scientific director of the Observatoire des sciences et des technologies, says such evaluations are highly subjective and by their nature inherently biased.

In the 2006 report, four areas were identified as strengths for Canada — ICT, health and related life sciences, natural resources and environmental science. While Canada's strengths in the first two have improved since then, the latter two are somewhat weaker "not only in ARC scores, but also in share of world publications and in a growing proportion of Canadian S&T experts identifying the fields as falling behind", the report states.

The finding has prompted some to warn that the country is slipping in key economic sectors. "The report is quite clear that it (earth and environmental sciences) has declined from a position of global leadership, very substantially in some cases. This should worry us. A lot," says Dr Richard Hawkins, a professor and Canada Research Chair in science, technology and innovation at the Univ of Calgary.

But Phillipson insists these fields continue to be strong. In an October 8th letter to The Ottawa Citizen, he stated: "Nearly all advanced countries have research priorities in the environment and natural resources, and this intense global competition likely underlies Canada's relative decline."

The expert panel report also included an assessment of emerging Canadian strengths by using "innovative bibliometric techniques" to identify research clusters and their rates of growth. Areas cited as promising are wireless technologies and networking, information processing and computation, nanotechnologies and digital media technologies.

It also cited Canadian experts as tagging several areas where "Canada is well placed to become a global leader in development and application". These are: personalized medicine and health care, several energy technologies, tissue engineering and digital media.

The panel also made "considerable attempts" to include measures relevant to the social sciences and humanities but ended up not using them due to the lack of available data.

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