“The governments of the last fifteen years have added disorder to the functioning of French research”

Sit is hardly productive to denigrate French universities, which do what they can with the means allocated to them, it is nevertheless permissible to wonder about the evolution of French research in recent decades. The place of our country in databases listing scientific publications, in particular the Web of Science which forms the basis of the Shanghai ranking, reveals a more worrying situation than suggested by Pierre Veltz’s column “Let’s stop self-denigration about the French university” published in The world of August 24, 2022.

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In its 2021 report on “The scientific position of France in the world and in Europe 2005-2018 », the Science and Technology Observatory (OST) observes the gradual passage of our country from the 6^e world rank in 2005 at 9^e in 2018, France having been overtaken successively by India, then Italy and finally South Korea. If the progression of very large countries like India is logical within the framework of a global process of rebalancing in favor of emerging countries, the observation is more worrying when France is overtaken by less populated countries like Italy or South Korea.

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The number of publications of a country (or of a city, region or university) is a function of the number of people carrying out research and the means available to these people. On these two points, France has made less progress than other countries. Thus, the Senate noted in 2020 that “domestic R&D expenditure (GERD) has oscillated since the 1990s around 2.25% of GDP (2.21% in 2017), far from the objective collectively set in Europe from the start of the 2000s: to achieve 3 % of GDP. Worse, in 2017, the research effort decreased in our country, to 2.21% of GDP. However, Germany exceeds 3% of GDP, like Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Austria in Europe. France is only the 13^e countries of the world on this indicator! ».

The worrying situation of French research

For fifteen years, the stagnation of funding and recruitment, even the reduction of the latter in certain organizations such as the CNRS, has been accompanied by incessant restructuring of the establishments with groupings such as that of Paris-Saclay benefiting from strong endowments. , unlike establishments that are not part of these large assemblies, and the implementation of a policy of “excellence” consisting of concentrating resources on the most recognized researchers.

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