Trends in the organization of public research organizations: lessons from the Brazilian case

This paper analyzes trends in the evolution of public research organizations (PROs) with special emphasis on the Brazilian case. Given the central role in global competitiveness played by policies of fostering innovation, PROs are increasingly stimulated to restructure themselves in order to participate in the innovation process. This is a global phenomenon but its specific characteristics differ between countries. The formats and contents of PROs in Brazil have-changed significantly in the last 15 years. Three main trajectories can be identified for Brazilian institutions: path finders (those that have adapted their original paths to the innovation perspective), path founders (those that have had to construct new paths), and path losers (those that have lost their original paths and have not found another).37319320

Evaluation of the results and impacts of a social-oriented technology program in Brazil: the case of Prosab (a sanitation research program)

This paper presents and discuss the main results and impacts of Prosab (a sanitation research program) sponsored by Finep (Brazilian Federal Agency of Innovation). Prosab was mainly carried out by universities and its purpose was to fulfill technological demands related to the Brazilian sanitation services. This paper deals with two important factors: evaluating a technological program with a social purpose and creating a methodology that could capture the overwhelming aspects of the program's outcomes. The evaluation methodology is separated into two fronts: results evaluation, which tries to seize all the intermediate outputs of the program; and impact evaluation, which concerns the general outcomes of the program for Brazilian society. Results evaluation focused on those who carried out the research project, using them as reference units for analyses, while the focus of impact evaluation was on the whole set of actors related to the sanitation industry, including the research community, sanitation companies, public actors at local and federal level. The unit of analysis was the program itself.18428930

Lacunas: a web interface to identify plant knowledge gaps to support informed decision-making

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Scientists from megadiverse countries, such as Brazil, face huge challenges in gathering and analyzing information about species richness and abundance. In Brazil, speciesLink is an e-infrastructure that offers free and open access to data from more than 300 biological and data collections. SpeciesLink's thematic network, INCT-Virtual Herbarium of Plants and Fungi and the List of Species of the Brazilian Flora, are used as primary data sources to develop Lacunas, an information system with a public web interface that generates detailed reports of the status of plant species occurrence data. Lacunas also integrates information about endemism, conservation status, and collecting efforts over time. Here we describe the motivation and the functionality of this system, showing how it can be useful in detecting under-sampled plant species and geographic areas. We show examples of how knowledge can be extracted from biodiversity primary data using Lacunas. For instance, Lacunas report revealed that 111 angiosperm species (10.3 %), currently considered Data Deficient (DD) in the Official List of Threatened Brazilian Flora, have their distribution well characterized. In addition, the situation of Attalea funifera, a native palm classified as DD, was analyzed in detail, together with other use cases. Information presented in Lacunas reports can thus be used by scientists and policy-makers to help evaluate the status of species occurrence data and prioritize digitization and collecting efforts, as well as some features concerning its conservation status. As Lacunas offers a public online interface, it may also become a valuable tool for helping decision-making processes to become more dynamic and transparent.231109131Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)CNPq [381021/2012-2]CNPq [Proc. 573883/2008-4