In recent years, Korea’s R&D investment by both public and private sectors has increased sharply. The incumbent government has been keen to boost R&D spending under the so-called “Science and Technology 577 Plan,” which calls for increasing the nation’s R&D investment to 5 percent of GDP by 2012 and making Korea one of the world’s seven science and technology powerhouses.

The increased R&D investment was supposed to translate into improved output in terms of such indicators as the number of Science Citation Index papers per researcher, the frequency of citations per paper, the number of international patent applications, and the amount of technology export income.

However, a recent report released by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Evaluation and Planning showed that the nation’s R&D output has fallen short of the expectations in one important aspect -- the quality of papers.

The institute has assessed the quality of papers using an indicator it has developed by taking into account such factors as the influence of the journals where papers were published and the number of citations per paper.

According to KISTEP, the quality index of the Korean-authored papers published in SCI core journals in 2009 averaged 0.933, much lower than the international average of 1. Korea lagged behind not only the world’s major advanced countries but also China (0.942).

Furthermore, Korea’s quality index worsened for two consecutive years in 2009 after falling to 0.945 in 2008 from 0.952 in 2007. When KISTEP singled out papers produced as the outcome of state-funded R&D projects, the index fared even worse -- 0.897. This index also deteriorated for two straight years.

These figures strongly suggest that Korea’s R&D funds, especially those of the public sector, have not been used productively. Among the 26 state-funded R&D institutes, only two -- the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information -- had an index above the international average.

While it is important for the government to increase its R&D budget each year, it is more important to ensure that taxpayers’ money is not wasted. In this regard, it is disturbing to hear that researchers at the 14 state-run R&D centers under the Ministry of Knowledge Economy were found to have spent 45.7 billion won over the past two years to make a total of 7,130 business trips abroad. The government needs to come up with measures to enhance R&D efficiency of state-funded research institutes.