Support study to the ex post evaluation of the ICT research in FP7 : annex 1 : report on network analysis (Task 2)

The present document, referred to as Annex 1 in the Final Report, details the methodology used for the Network Analysis (NA) to investigate the FP7 ICT data, and the findings from this Task, including comparison of FP7 data with FP6 data. Before listing the various variables and indicators we used and designed to conduct the analysis, we wish to discuss the network construction process to underline a series of issues. For sake of completeness, we include part of the discussion presented in the interim report. The analysis is based on two datasets (stored in two distinct physical files) we shall call the FP6 and FP7 data. The FP7 data is to be used in order to study the relationships organizations developed during the lifetime of FP7, while the FP6 data is there to allow comparison with the previous FP and assert how FP7 allowed the network of collaboration to evolve since FP6. A first task was thus to see how much these two datasets overlap and evaluate whether the FP6 data could reliably be used. The results from this first task showed that only a fraction (28.7%) of all organizations present in the FP7 data is also part of the FP6 data. Any conclusions regarding the possible evolution of the collaboration network based on a comparison between FP6 and FP7 must then be made with caution. A lexicon, included at the end of this Annex, reports the definitions of the most technical words used in this document.