Towards building a monitoring platform for a challenge-oriented smart specialisation with RIS3-MCAT

In the new research and innovation (R&I) paradigm, aimed at a transformation towards more sustainable, inclusive and fair pathways to address societal and environmental challenges, and at generating new patterns of specialisation and new trajectories for socioeconomic development, it is essential to provide monitoring systems and tools to map and understand the contribution of R&I policies and projects. To address this transformation, we present the RIS3-MCAT platform, the result of a line of work aimed at exploring the potential of open data, semantic analysis, and data visualisation, for monitoring challenge-oriented smart specialisation in Catalonia. RIS3-MCAT is an interactive platform that facilitates access to R&I project data in formats that allow for sophisticated analyses of a large volume of texts, enabling the detailed study of thematic specialisations and challenges beyond classical classification systems. Its conceptualisation, development framework and use are presented in this paper. Keywords: open data, research and innovation policy, smart specialisation strategies, text mining, data visualisation, scientometrics 1. INTRODUCTION The challenges posed by globalisation, technology, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic require significant changes in our way of living. Although large transition costs are associated with a successful attainment of all those challenges, the potential opportunities brought about are enormous (Bigas et al., 2021).