The Sustainability Goals
According to the Report on Science and Technology Indicators for Norway (“The Indicator Report”) (pdf), Norway has a long way to go to achieve its sustainability goals. Both in terms of actions in Norway and Norway's contribution to the global work to achieve the sustainability goals. Although the report states that sustainability goals can be difficult to measure and that some sustainability goals actually does not have the needed data to do the measuring, the report nevertheless clearly shows that Norway is progressing very slowly and that we in fact are without a chance to reach the sustainability goals by 2030.
The UN sustainability goal number 13 states that we must stop climate change. The indicator report shows that Norway's contribution has stagnated at best. This is critical. I am therefore pleased that our faculty strategy places great emphasis on sustainability. Much of our work relates to this, but we must take further actions to increase the chances for Norway to achieve the sustainability goals.
Gender balance and equal pay
There is considerable room for improvement in order to achieve gender balance and equal pay for equal work in Norway. It is an embarrassing truth that the higher the educational level, the greater the wage differences are between men and women in Norway. This is something we really need to work on.
The report shows that women outnumber men in universities and colleges today. Women are particularly in majority in health studies. Technology and science studies, however, consists mainly of male students. The Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences takes important actions to balance the gender balance in our academic disciplines, for instance in the project Female Researchers on Track (FRONT). FRONT works for equality among employees, cultural development for gender balance and to aid women pursuing an academic career at our faculty.
Research Funding from the EU
The Indicator Report also measures return share, that is, the percentage of research funding from EU research programs that Norway receives. The return share is now at 2.2 percent, which is 10 percent higher than the target figure of 2 percent. This is very good, and clearly shows that many Norwegian institutions are putting a lot of hard work into their research, especially at the University of Oslo. We are the university that has received most EU grants in Norway.
The University of Oslo has received many achievements in several research areas, especially grants from the European Research Council (ERC) for outstanding research. ERC grants are some of the most prestigious research achievements a researcher can receive. The university has received 60 ERC grants in total, almost half of which belong to researchers at our faculty.
The Norwegian authorities have long been concerned about the return share from the EU, and have implied that they are planning to further tighten the return share requirements from the forthcoming EU-funded research program Horizon Europe. It is important that we continue our success recipe for applying for future research funding.
Norway in Top Ten List of Most Innovative Countries in Europe
Norway is for the first time ranked among the ten most innovative countries in Europe, ahead of innovative-strong Germany and United Kingdom, among others. In addition, Thomson Reuters ranked the University of Oslo as the most innovative university in Norway in 2019.
Norway has seen particularly strong growth in the development of small and medium-sized innovation businesses and in the development of knowledge-intensive services, many with a focus on sustainability. This is not surprising since we have observed high demand for labor from newly established businesses in recent years, especially in the Oslo area. Nevertheless, Oslo still ranks slightly behind the very best cities in Europe in terms of developing new profitable jobs.
Publication and citations
Norway ranks fourth in the world in the number of publications per capita, right behind Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden. This is a solid position, although rich, western countries with relatively few inhabitants naturally have an advantage in this survey.
It is important to measure publication volume, but it is even more important that the published articles are of high quality. The number of publication citations is a parameter that measures quality. Norway ranks seventh in the world when it comes to number of citations per article. This is above average. We are behind Switzerland and the Netherlands, at the same level as Sweden and just ahead of Finland and Austria. These countries are comparable to Norway and the fact that we rank fairly similarly is a good indication that Norwegian research has great impact.
Overall perspective
Our faculty aims to be among Europe's leading communities for research, education and innovation. For that reason, the Indicator Report is useful to see our strengths and weaknesses within research, education and innovation in an overall perspective.