Subjects of study

The analyses carried out by the OST may focus on different subjects and areas of study.

The analyses carried out by the OST may focus on different subjects and scopes of study depending on partners' needs.  

  • The analysis of institutional or geographical entities makes it possible to clarify the scientific and technological positioning of actors (country, region, institution, laboratory, team) within their environment
  • The study of research topics makes it possible to analyse the scientific dynamics of these topics, which may correspond to a societal challenge, a scientific sovereignty issue, an emerging topic or a funded topic
  • The analysis of the impact of public research policy can measure the impact of funding schemes or of organisational or institutional reforms.

Entities

Analysis may focus on entities defined according to geographical, institutional or organisational criteria:

  • Geographical entity: country, region;
  • Institutional entity: institution; laboratory;
  • Organisational entity: teams. 

The OST carries out this type of analysis in particular for reports provided to evaluation committees as part of the Hcéres evaluation process, but also for bespoke studies carried out for regional institutions or actors.
The OST draws on its detailed expertise in scoping, in particular to identify the various public and private actors in France.
 

Topics

Certain research topics attract particular interest from research actors. These topics may correspond to:

  • a societal challenge (climate change, healthy and sustainable food, infectious diseases, etc.);
  • a scientific sovereignty issue (cybersecurity, artificial intelligence);
  • an emerging topic (quantum computing).

The OST carries out this type of study for various State departments on strategic topics, but also for funding agencies responsible for a specific topic, and for highly specialised institutions wishing to gain an in-depth understanding of research dynamics in their field of specialisation. 

The OST draws on its expertise in building thematic corpora and applying suitable semantic analysis methods (mappings, topic modelling…).
 

Public policy 

Evaluating public policy is essential to assess whether the results obtained match the objectives set (effectiveness – efficiency) by public actors. 

The studies carried out by the OST make it possible in particular to assess the ex-post impact of a public policy by comparing observed results with a reference situation. They draw on advanced statistical analysis tools designed to identify the causal effect of the scheme in a context where other external factors may influence results. The OST carries out this type of study for funding agencies or programme agencies as well as for institutions undergoing transformation.