The policy is dead, long live the policy—Revealing science, technology, and innovation policy priorities and government transitions via network analysis

Abstract

Abstract Each government has priorities for science, technology, and innovation policies (STIP). How can we identify the changing or reinforced STIP research priorities induced by government transitions? This study aims to unveil the STIP changing structure in the public funding research call contents in Colombia from 2007 to 2022, applying a co-word and network analysis approach to 389 funding research calls. We showed each government’s changing distribution of the betweenness centrality of 334 fields from Health, Life, Physical, and Social Sciences. We found that STIP priorities are getting denser and more diverse in terms of research fields. Despite this complexity, just 14 fields of Life, Physical, and Social Sciences, such as drug discovery, general business, management & accounting, and nature and landscape conservation, maintained their higher strategic relevance despite the government in office. This study maps the short and long-term focus of STIP regardless of the changing political tide inherent in democratic countries.