Prominent group of researchers “determined to see through” reforms after repeated failures
Thirty prominent Croatian researchers have urged their national government to use Croatia’s share of the EU’s Covid-19 recovery fund to carry out long-delayed R&D policy reforms without which they say “Croatia will not be able to move up from the bottom of the list of European countries” in terms of its R&D performance.
Their letter, released on 2 November, follows Croatia being allocated €6.3 billion from the €750bn EU fund, and the Croatian government declaring it will use some of the money for the largest investment in research, innovation and higher education in Croatia’s history—totalling around €320 million over the next five years.
The letter says a lack of funding for research, innovation and higher education in Croatia has meant that “vital sectoral reforms have been left unimplemented or have been postponed”.
“Now,” it adds, “we have an extraordinary opportunity to develop new legislation, reform the institutions and allocate significant financial resources responsibly, in order to improve the quality of Croatian R&I and HE.”
The letter is co-authored by Pavel Gregorić from Zagreb’s Institute of Philosophy; Mirko Planinić of the University of Zagreb; Vlatko Silobrčić, a fellow of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts; and Tomislav Stojanov, a researcher at the University of Nottingham in the UK.
It is signed by another 26 prominent Croatian researchers working in the country and aboard, including in Luxembourg, Switzerland, the United States and Mexico.
“We now have a historic moment in which to implement much-needed substantial changes,” the letter says, listing “six key principles on which the academic system should be based, and a set of six specific measures to be taken to support such a system”.
The principles include openness, freedom, transparency and responsibility, while the measures include drafting new reforms in an open and transparent way as well as providing adequate funding and an assurance of independence for the Croatian Science Foundation.
Other measures are establishing a “comprehensive, fair and responsible system of state funding” for public research institutes and universities, with “transparent and measurable performance indicators”, as well as a “comprehensive, independent and effective quality assurance system” for public research institutions and universities.
Merit and inclusion
The signatories also want to see members of R&D bodies and committees “elected according to the principles of merit and inclusion” and the re-establishment of a “national board for ethics in R&I and HE…to which all other ethical committees report”.
The latter point relates to such a body not being appointed for several years, after complaints from some parts of the academic community about its supremacy over institution-level ethics bodies.
The co-authors told Research Professional News that the current R&I and HE law, dating from 2003, is “old and has proven to be less successful compared to other EU countries”.
“For instance, if we take into consideration the official European Research Council and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions statistics on the number of grantees [for these EU R&D funders] per country, Croatia is among the four or six least successful EU countries,” they said.
“The open letter is saying that we need to be smart enough to see this Covid pandemic and the [recovery] funds as a historical opportunity to improve things in the country.”
The authors said they were “especially concerned about academic ethics and research integrity”, as even the best R&I and HE legislation is likely to be undermined without an efficient system of promotion and protection of core values.
“It has been more than three years that Croatia has not had a national ethical body for R&I and HE issues,” they said. “Besides the fact that numerous ethical complaints have not been processed in the meantime, this has had other devastating effects.”
They concluded: “After several failed attempts at reform, we are determined to see this one through.”
Croatia’s science ministry did not reply to repeated requests for comment.