Tribune. The curves speak for themselves. The total number of French scientific publications per year, which in 2015 had fallen below that of Italy and, in 2018, below that of South Korea, placing us in ninth position, will be joined and likely to be overtaken by Australia, Spain and Canada, as soon as 2020 figures are consolidated.
It is no longer a question of the great global upheaval induced by the emergence of China and India, but of a downgrading even within established scientific countries, including European ones. It is not a matter of self-esteem, it is a question of sovereignty, vitality, the ability to understand the world and to face global issues such as climate change or pandemics. In short, a question of everyday life and the future for all citizens.
We can of course relativize and try to reassure ourselves by remembering that the number of publications matters much less than their reliability, their quality and their originality, and console ourselves by advancing some recent successes worthy of our glorious past. Still, the blow is tough, and we would do well to try to understand what is happening to us while there is still time. The United States and China will not wait and, if we want Europe to be the vector of our collective ambitions, we must still hold our rank in order to be able to weigh.
Much better performance abroad
It is tempting, for any explanation, to lament the lack of resources. It is true that the Germans fund their universities, their research and their research and development more generously than we do, that this partly explains their performance, which is now much better than ours, and that the law on the programming of research makes it possible to start filling the gap. But what about Australia, Canada, Italy, Spain? How have these countries succeeded in reforming their training and research apparatus, in focusing their efforts, in budgetary contexts that are sometimes even more constrained than ours? How did they succeed in creating or re-creating confidence in their researchers, in encouraging daring and initiative, in establishing a fruitful connection between research, industry and society?
“The State must concentrate on the national strategy, deploy the major objectives of public interest and support the action of the establishments”
We will then invoke our complicated institutional history, our administrative millefeuille, our bureaucratic excesses. However, our landscape has been partly rationalized and simplified, the parochial disputes between universities, grandes écoles and research organizations have started to ebb, giving way to innovative and effective alliance strategies. Over the past decade, these have made it possible for truly large research universities, in Paris and in the region, to set up, without stifling smaller-scale initiatives by a number of innovative establishments.
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