Montenegro remains strongly committed to strengthening research infrastructure

The Government of Montenegro adopted the Revised Roadmap for Research Infrastructure of Montenegro (2019-2020). Adoption of the Roadmap is part of the EU integration process and alignment with the EU standards in the subject area, but also reflects the need to identify key national research infrastructures and the future development directions.

Montenegro was the first country in the Western Balkans to adopt the national Roadmap for Research Infrastructure (2015-2020) back in 2015, which was done on the basis of the process of research infrastructure mapping of 2013, as an integral part of the Roadmap.

However, due to post-2015 changes at the EU and regional level, as well as to major reform activities in the research and innovation system at the national level, the need has arisen to amend the existing document.

In revising the Roadmap, the objective was to provide a detailed overview of the research infrastructure in Montenegro, to define the priorities and sources of financing in this area, to determine the potential for regional and large European research infrastructure, as well as to identify the priority activities for the coming period.

The document addresses the issue of open access to research infrastructure, as part of the broader open access policy in science and innovation of the European Union, for the first time. Opening research infrastructures encourages interdisciplinarity, promotes international and intersectoral mobility, creates numerous cooperation opportunities and brings a very positive economic component. Namely, open access avoids duplication of equipment, which enables research infrastructures to expand the range of research activities by implementing a certain part of the research process through the use of available equipment of another research infrastructure, using the savings to purchase some other, missing equipment. In addition, service users from the economic and civil sector can use this approach to test their products and innovative ideas in laboratory conditions subject to a certain fee, but they can also use databases of research infrastructures.

This year, the Ministry of Science conducted a new process of research equipment mapping, which involved 36 institutions. The results of the process indicated good condition of the existing equipment, whose total value was estimated at EUR 28 million, 67% of which was invested in the past six years, which testifies to a significant growth in investments in this area, including both the public and the user sector investments.

In the mapping process, the Ministry of Science used special questionnaires to find out the preferences of scientific research institutions, innovative organisations and interested public in terms of the access to national, regional and large European research infrastructure. The results of this process make up an integral part of the Revised Roadmap.