New classification system a "huge step forward" for strengthening Canada's R&D data

The tri-agencies, the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and Statistics Canada have jointly launched a new standard for measuring and analyzing R&D.

The Canada Research and Development Classification (CRDC) 2020—the first of its kind in Canada—unifies and streamlines data collection across these institutions and government. It is also closely aligned with the OECD’s global guidelines for collecting and reporting data on R&D, known as the Frascati Manual, ensuring the data are internationally comparable.

The launch marks the end of a multi-year process initiated by the federal research funders to improve the R&D data they collect. Those data provide a snapshot of Canada’s R&D landscape and are an essential tool for statisticians, policymakers and other stakeholders in academia, government and  business.

“This is a huge step forward,” said Dr. David Wolfe (PhD), co-director of the Innovation Policy Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, in an interview with Research Money. “Not everyone is going to agree with every single category and every decision that StatsCan has made in the categorization, but it should be read with an eye to the future. The CRDC is something that’s going to change and evolve and grow over time.”

Wolfe was a member of the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) 2018 expert panel on the state of science and technology and industrial R&D, the latest in a series of assessments of Canada's R&D performance. Those assessments have been constrained by limitations in available data, especially in the social sciences, arts and humanities and industrial R&D.

The CRDC could change that. It is now the recommended classification for the R&D community, including government and higher education, and will be implemented over time by the federal granting agencies as they roll out their funding programs. Just last week, for example, CFI announced that it has implemented the new standard in its awards management system. Furthermore, the CRDC is expected to be used by a new, integrated grants management system currently under development by the tri-agencies.

In a statement, CFI’s president and CEO Roseann O’Reilly Runte called the CRDC “a signal achievement”:  “As new fields develop and research becomes increasingly interdisciplinary, international and collaborative across the public, private and academic sectors, the ability to identify, locate and apply the knowledge created is of great importance.”

The CRDC is also used in some of Statistics Canada's routine surveys. In future, its use may be expanded within the agency and other organizations, such as colleges, universities and R&D institutes, or provincial and territorial granting agencies may adopt it.

"The impact of the CRDC will be felt in years to come," said Franklin Assoumou-Ndong, chief, Statistical Classifications and Standards at Statistics Canada. "We are just starting, and implementations will be done at different levels and in various situations or surveys. Before all of these developments, it is good to have a sound standard already developed, which will be tested and perfected over time."

Canada's approach

Right now, the federal granting agencies use different R&D classifications systems. Each one is domain-specific, reflecting the agencies’ mandates in health research, social sciences and humanities, or natural sciences and engineering, but not areas in which those mandates overlap or intersect. The classifications are also outdated, and therefore unable to capture the true scope and scale of R&D activities in Canada today. This piecemeal approach creates an incomplete and uneven picture of Canada’s R&D contributions and potentially obscures important trends and impacts.

The development of the CRDC began in 2017, in recognition of the need to modernize data collection, improve data quality, create a common language for talking about research in Canada, and to better support multidisciplinary research, said Ariadne Legendre, acting deputy of Planning and Programs at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, who led the CRDC’s development.

The initiative gained momentum following the Canada Fundamental Science Review, which called for greater coordination and cooperation between the four pillar agencies, she said.

The new standard, developed in consultation with the Office of the Chief Science Advisor and the research community, is aligned with the 2015 edition of the Frascati Manual, established in 1962 in Frascati, Italy, where OECD experts first agreed on a common approach to measure and report on R&D. The CRDC is also inspired by the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), developed in 2008 and updated this year to capture changes in the R&D sector.

CRDC 2020 Version 1.0 is a set of three related classifications, which are further subdivided into levels and categories:

• Type of Activity (TOA), such as basic, applied or experimental research;
• Field of Research (FOR), such as urban planning, artificial intelligence or Indigenous health;
• Socio-economic Objective (SEO), such as environmental protection, health or education.

Version 1.0 is designed to support the funders' peer-review processes and reporting requirements at the agency, national and international levels.

“We built this classification to have a broad use. We tried to consider all the needs we have in the research ecosystem and to support that, and to ensure the system remains relevant over the years,” said Legendre. “In time, it will allow us to see the evolution of research and science in Canada.”

For Statistics Canada, the CRDC will streamline data collection and improve data quality. In fact, the CRDC reflects a new way of developing standards, in partnership with a wide range of stakeholders from the outset, as part of the agency's whole-of-government approach to data stewardship and data management, said Assoumou-Ndong. “This is part of our modernization process. It’s the way Statistics Canada wants to go and it’s the way of the future,” he said. 

Statistics Canada, with its partners, will oversee minor revisions to the CRDC every year or two and major revisions every five years to ensure it remains relevant. 

Wolfe said those revisions will be critical to the CRDC’s success. “If you don't keep it up to date, it will ossify over time, and you'll be dealing with a historical artifact.” 

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