Describing national science and technology systems through a multivariate approach: country participation in the 6th Framework Programmes

The objective of this work is to describe the distribution of different types of participating organizations in the health thematic area of the 6th Framework Programme. A total of 2132 different organizations were classified according to four types and then grouped by country. A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was carried out on the percentage of funding obtained by each type of organization. Results show a countries map plotted around the “private” and “public” principal components. It is observed that there are countries which research is basically performed by government research centres, while others are supported in the university activity. We conclude that the PCA is a suitable method to plot the distribution of research organizations by country and the results could be used as a tool for theoretical studies about the scientific activity in a country.