Frascati Family

This manual has been prepared by the OECD Secretariat in conjunction with theWorking Party of National Experts on Science and Technology Indicators (NESTI) inorder to provide users and producers of patent statistics with basic guidelines forcompiling and analysing these data.The importance which the OECD attaches to the use of patent statistics goes backto the late 1970s. The OECD issued a first edition of this manual in 1994. At the “Blue Sky” conference on “New science and technology indicators for a knowledge-based economy”, organised by the OECD in 1996, experts identified patents as a promising avenue for improving our quantitative understanding of science and technology (S&T) activities in a rapidly evolving economic and policy context. Since then, statistical work on patents has advanced significantly, at the OECD, in member countries and in academia. This manual takes account of these developments.The manual shows what patent statistics can be used for, what they cannot beused for, and how to count patents in order to maximise information on S&T activities while minimising “noise” and bias. Patent data provide unique insights into the processes and outcomes of inventive activities (e.g. the location of inventive activities, inventive networks, emerging technologies, etc.). Used with other data, they support the analysis of other dimensions of innovation that are of policy interest, such as the role of intellectual property in economic performance, entrepreneurship, and the tracking of linkages in the S&T system. Yet, patent-based indicators suffer from several weaknesses and, as a result, they should be designed and interpreted with care, hence the need for this manual.

This Manual is intended to provide guidelines for the measurement of Human Resources devoted to Science and Technology (HRST) and the analysis of such data.It has been prepared in close co-operation between the OECD and the DGXII and Eurostat of the European Commission, other OECD Directorates (notably DEELSA), UNESCO and the International Labour Office (ILO) and with the support of national experts.The text was discussed at specialist workshops at the OECD in 1992 and 1993 and then submitted to the Group of National Experts on Science and Technology Indicators (NESTI) at its meeting in Canberra in April 1994. In recognition of the hospitality of the Australian authorities in organising the meeting, a suggestion was made and approved by NESTI that the guidelines should henceforth be known as the "Canberra Manual". The Group recommended that the text be submitted to the Committee for Scientific and Technological Policy for derestriction after incorporation of the proposals of the meeting and subsequent written comments and after professional editing.After these amendments had been made, the document was approved by the Committee and is now made available to the public under the responsibility of the Secretary-General of the OECD.

In June 1963, the OECD met with national experts on research and experimentaldevelopment (R&D) statistics at the Villa Falcioneri in Frascati, Italy. The result wasthe first official version of the Proposed Standard Practice for Surveys of Researchand Development, which has come to be better known as the Frascati Manual.This publication is the seventh edition of a manual that was first written in a ratherdifferent economic and geopolitical context from today’s. More than five decades later, its continued relevance is justified by even stronger interest in comparing the R&D efforts made by different countries and identifying what key features underpin them.R&D is increasingly viewed as an input to innovation in the context of the overall efforts made in a knowledge-based global economy, but continues to play a crucial part and is a major focus of government policies because of its unique features. While demand for aggregate benchmarking is at the heart of this manual, this edition recognises the importance of enriching our macro picture of R&D performance with a better understanding of the dynamics and linkages at the micro level. This emphasises the relevance of R&D micro-data for purposes other than producing aggregate indicators, such as the analysis of its impacts across multiple actors.Although the manual is basically a technical document, it is a cornerstone of OECD efforts to increase our understanding of the role played by science, technology andinnovation when analysing national systems of research and innovation. Furthermore, by providing internationally accepted definitions of R&D and classifications of its component activities, the manual contributes to intergovernmental discussions on good practices for science ..

This document contains indicative voluntary guidance on the implementation of business R&D surveys consistent with the standards and proposals contained in the OECD Frascati Manual. The document is oriented towards experts in charge of designing and implementing official R&D surveys, but may be also valuable to academics and researchers with a similar practical survey orientation.This document is the result of a project undertaken by the OECD Working Party of NationalExperts on Science and Technology Indicators (NESTI). This project was initiated in 2019 in response to requests from countries for guidance to implement a number of Frascati Manual recommendations. Such recommendations had been incorporated in international data requests from OECD (as well as Eurostat) to national R&D contact points but elicited limited response owing to implementation challenges. Drawing on the rich experience of different national survey practices, this project has developed proposals for reference questions and companion material (reference survey items and explanations) that can be adapted for specific domestic purposes while maintaining a sufficient level of international comparability. The result of this work comprises a set of questions, presented in a logical constructive order that reflects the common topics and structure of national business R&D surveys and allows responses to build on previous ones.This guidance document comprises the following sections, which follow the logicalstructure of a business R&D survey without necessarily representing a model questionnaire as such. Sections and their question items are identified with a reference code. 

Like editions issued in 1948, 1950, 1961, and 1977, this 1993 edition of the Balance of Payments Manual (the Manual) serves as an international standard for theconceptual framework underlying balance of payments statistics. The Manual also functions as a guide for member countries submitting regular balance of payments reports to the International Monetary Fund (the IMF or the Fund). In preparing this fifth edition, the IMF made every effort to ascertain the needs and to reflect the viewpoints of national compilers and various users of balance of payments statistics and international investment position data.The primary purposes of the Manual are (i) to provide standards for concepts, definitions, classifications, and conventions and (ii) to facilitate the systematic national and international collection, organization, and comparability of balance of payments and international investment position statistics. A companion volume, the Balance of Payments Compilation Guide (the Guide), provides practical guidance to national compilers on the collection, presentation, and systematization of external statistics. The Guide is particularly useful for countries in which statistical systems are in the early stages of development or in transition.

Formerly absent from the concerns of most politicians, indicators of scientific activity are now at the heart of the debate over the linkages between advances in science and technology and economic and social progress. There is a growing awareness of the advantages of basing opinions, and subsequent choices, on criteria that lend themselves more to quantitative evaluation. Science policy reviews would seem inconceivable today without recourse to existing indicators. Long focused on measures of input, such as expenditure and R&D staff, interest is turning increasingly to output – and especially to technology-related output (e.g. patents, technology balance of payments, trade in high tech). Where science is concerned, bibliometric indicators are a must.In this paper, we shall begin with a brief history of bibliometrics, to trace its origins and define its role in the evaluation of science. We shall present a variety of bibliometric indicators, noting their uses and their limitations, along with practical examples. The aim of this study is to highlight both the strengths and weaknesses of bibliometric indicators and, above all, the precautions that need to be takenwhen using them. It does not purport to be a comprehensive survey of the field.Bibliometrics is a tool by which the state of science and technology can be observed through the overall production of scientific literature, at a given level of specialisation. It is a means for situating a country in relation to the world, an institution in relation to a country, and even individual scientists in relation to their own communities. These scientific indicators are equally suitable – providing thecustomary precautions are ..

The Oslo Manual provides guidelines for collecting and interpreting data data oninnovation. It seeks to facilitate international comparability, and provides a platform for research and experimentation on innovation measurement. Its guidelines are principally intended to support national statistical offices and other producers of innovation data in designing, collecting, and publishing measures of innovation to meet a range of research and policy needs. In addition, the guidelines are also designed to be of direct value to users of information on innovation.These guidelines should be viewed as a combination of formal statistical standards, advice on best practices, as well as proposals for extending the measurement of innovation into new domains through the use of existing and new tools.At present, a large number of countries and international organisations recognise the importance of innovation measurement and have developed capabilities to collect such data. This manual supports this co-ordinated effort in pursuit of robust, internationally comparable data, indicators and analysis.