Question No: 993
Ms MR Shinn (Democratic Alliance) to ask the Minister of Science and Technology:
(1) How many scientists (a) were registered and (b) are rated by the National Research Foundation (NRF) (i) in (aa) 2007 and (bb) 2008 and (ii) during the period of 1 January 2009 up to the latest specified for which the information is available;
(2) Whether the number of scientists being rated by the NRF has declined; if not, what is the position in this regard; if so, what is the reason for the decline?
Reply:
1. (a) The NRF does not maintain a registration system for scientists in the country. However, the 2006/07 research and development (R and D) Survey reported a total headcount of 39 591 researchers, including Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and postdoctoral students, across all sectors (government, business, higher education, science councils and non-profit organisations (NGOs)).
(b)(i) The evaluation and rating of individual scientists is based primarily on the quality of the research outputs in the recent past and is undertaken by national and international peers or reviewers who are requested to critically scrutinise the completed research. “Recent”, in the context of the NRF evaluation and rating system, means outputs of the past seven years, for example; from 1 January 2001 to 31 December 2008 (for applications which were submitted on 27 February 2009). It should be noted that while the NRF rating system exclusively focuses on research outputs, student supervision is also a key priority for South Africa.
Since 1984, the evaluation and rating system applied only to scientists in the natural Sciences, Engineering and Technology (SET), it was introduced in the social sciences and humanities in 2002. Researchers are rated for a period of five years, thereafter they have to be re-evaluated. In the re-evaluation, researchers who had already been rated are invited to submit documents for re-evaluation and if the researcher does not respond to the invitation their rating lapses.
The NRF uses a financial year cycle to report on rated researchers, for example, from 1 April to 31 March the following year.
(aa) In the year 2007/08, of the 621 scientists who applied for rating, 247 were new applicants. There are 533 scientists who received their rating, bringing the total number of rated scientists or valid ratings to 1 686. The reason for the high number of applications (533) is that this was the first year of re-evaluations for Social Sciences and Humanities.
(bb) In 2008/09, of the 556 scientists who applied for rating, 262 were new applicants. In this year, 478 scientists received ratings from the NRF bringing the total number of rated researchers to 1 914.
(ii) Although the rating of scientists for the current financial year is still in progress, 592 scientists have applied, 341 of these are new applicants; the number of scientists who will be rated this year and hence the overall number of rated scientists has not yet been finalised. It is important to note that an increase in the number of new applicants and hence rated researchers is due to incentive funding, which enables rated researchers to apply for funding for the duration of their rating.
2. The number of scientists rated by the NRF has increased from 1 686 in 2007/08 to 1 914 in 2008/09. What is also encouraging is that the number of new applicants has increased from 247 to 341 in the period 2007/08 to 2009/10. It is important to note that 39 591 which is the number of researchers reflected in 1(a) above, includes students doing PhD, post-doctoral research, whereas the numbers of rated scientists incorporates scientists who show various levels of expertise in their fields.
Issued by: Department of Science and Technology
7 October 2009
