Evaluation of science, technology and innovation policy indicators and country comparisons

Science, technology and innovation (STI) policies are of great importance for countries to reach their sustainable development goals. Numerous global databases have many indicators that measure and compare the performance of STI policies of countries. However, many problems arise regarding how to identify, classify and systematically analyze these indicators in order to measure, monitor and improve the performance of STI. The study includes a literature review on global problems and new trends in STI policies, while mentioning the necessity of an internationally comparable STI indicator set, current STI indicator studies and efforts, and studies for each continent. In light of these, all the indicators selected are introduced in detail. The strengths and weaknesses of the countries in the study in terms of evaluation indicator values are indicated. After determining the indicator weights objectively with the entropy method, 40 countries with available data on the determined indicators are compared with cluster analysis, GRA, TOPSIS, VIKOR, PROMETHEE I-II, ARAS, COPRAS, MULTIMOORA, ELECTRE, SAW and MAUT methods. The aim of the study is to enable decision-makers, researchers and policy makers to better understand the STI indicators and their dimensions and to produce more effective and efficient policies with the perspective of the current literature on this subject. This study offers a new and original approach with MCDM methods on this subject. A common final ranking was obtained by using the results of MCDM methods with the Board Count method. When this ranking is evaluated according to the Spearman correlation analysis with the rankings specified in Global Innovation (2019) and Global Competitiveness (2019) indices, it is seen that there is an excellent positive correlation between them. In addition, it is possible to update and publish this study every year.