Gross expenditure on research and development Scotland 2023

Introduction

This annual publication presents information on research and development (R&D) performed by the business, higher education, government and private non-profit sectors in Scotland in 2023. The majority of data in this publication is sourced from surveys conducted by the Office of National Statistics (ONS). Further information about Scottish R&D activity can be found on the Scottish Government's innovation statistics homepage. An Excel workbook containing tables to accompany this publication is available in the Supporting documents section.

Gross Expenditure on R&D (GERD) comprises R&D undertaken by the Business Enterprise (BERD), Higher Education (HERD), Government (GovERD) and Private Non-Profit (PNP) sectors.

Note that all values in this release are in current prices unless otherwise stated and therefore have not been adjusted for inflation.

Time series

Estimates of gross expenditure on research and development (GERD) for Scotland and the other countries and regions that make up the UK are only available for 2022 and 2023. This is because estimates for business enterprise expenditure on research and development (BERD) below UK level are currently only available for 2022 and 2023 due to recent methodological improvements. As BERD is one of the four components that make up GERD, it is currently not possible to provide estimates of GERD below UK level prior to 2022. In addition, 2023 estimates of private non-profit (PNP) expenditure on R&D, and therefore GERD, are not available for England, Northern Ireland, Wales and the English regions of ‘North East’ and ‘Yorkshire and the Humber’. These estimates have been removed to protect confidentiality. They are included in UK totals. More information on changes to R&D statistics can be found in the Data and methodology section.

ONS are compiling a time series for business sector expenditure on R&D at a regional (i.e. below UK) level. Before this time series becomes available, we would advise users not to compare any of the regional 2022 and 2023 BERD or GERD estimates in this release with earlier years’ values published previously.

R&D spend as a share of gross domestic product (GDP)

The GDP series have not yet been adjusted to incorporate the recent improvements to the measurement of R&D. Therefore estimates of R&D spend as a percentage of GDP in this release should be treated as indicative only. It is also important to note that GDP was particularly low in 2020 and 2021 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and was impacted by high inflation in 2022 and 2023.

An Official Statistics Publication for Scotland

These statistics are official statistics. Official statistics are statistics that are produced by crown bodies, those acting on behalf of crown bodies, or those specified in statutory orders, as defined in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

Scottish Government statistics are regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

More information about Scottish Government statistics is available on the Scottish Government website.

Our GERD Scotland 2020 publication was the first to incorporate improvements to the methodology used to produce estimates of R&D performed in the business (BERD) and higher education (HERD) sectors. At that time, we asked the OSR to pause the Accredited Official Statistics (then known as ‘National Statistics’) status of the GERD Scotland statistics until methodological work was complete. Whilst changes to HERD are now complete, Accredited Official Statistics status remains paused until redevelopment of BERD statistics is complete. This aims to include the production of comparable time series for BERD and GERD below UK level. More information on the Official Statistics status of GERD statistics below UK level can be found in the ONS’s Gross domestic expenditure on research and development, UK: 2023 publication.