2 Long-term perspectives

The Government will continue to increase allocations to research in the coming years. This growth will help to realise the nine objectives for Norwegian research policy while at the same time encouraging industry to increase its R&D investments.

It is crucial that investments in research and higher education are long-term, coordinated and given clear priorities. The Government will therefore launch an effort to develop a long-term national plan for research and higher education. The long-term plan will set out political priorities for research and higher education in a 10-year perspective, and the priorities will serve as a guidepost for investments in buildings, research infrastructure, fellowships and expanded student enrolment capacity. The long-term plan will be a tool for targeting efforts towards areas in which Norway has a strategic advantage. By the same token, the plan will provide latitude for innovative, pioneering research that may lead to fundamental new understanding. The plan will have a timeframe of 10 years and be updated every four years. The Government aims to present the first long-term national plan for research and higher education in 2014.

The long-term plan will be structured around a set of clearly-defined objectives, and will specify the Government’s overall knowledge policy objectives along with secondary objectives indicating how much the Government believes can reasonably be achieved during the plan’s timeframe, in light of the available resources and overall priorities. The Government will set clear targets for Norway’s performance in relation to key indicators used to classify the state of Norwegian higher education and research, such as the number of R&D work-years per 1 000 employees, the proportion of the population with a higher education, R&D investments per capita, R&D investments related to mainland GDP1, innovation in trade and industry, and trends in publication and citation frequency.

The long-term plan will ensure a long-range perspective as well as more predictability and transparency with regard to national investments in R&D and higher education. The Government will work to promote an active public debate on investment in higher education and research as well as the results produced by research. Research and higher education extend across all sectors, and are by nature international with a wide array of stakeholders. At the same time, the major social challenges, such as climate change, are not confined within sectoral boundaries. Scientific disciplines, institutions and authorities must find solutions across traditional patterns of cooperation. The activities to draw up a long-term national plan for research and higher education will serve as an arena in which the research and higher education sector, trade and industry, and the users of research may engage in an open discussion of how to prioritise resources. More transparency regarding these priorities will lead to greater predictability for actors within the sector. The Ministry of Education and Research will establish a system that allows all the key players to make their priorities known. The Research Council of Norway, the Government’s most important research policy adviser, will play a central role in drawing up the plan.