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Paper short abstract:

This paper’s main goal is to present an innovative tool of scientific research policy in Argentina: the “Projects for Technological and Social Development” (2012).

Paper long abstract:

Since 1980 there has been a broad debate among scientists contesting the idea that science research and therefore scientific knowledge was not being "useful" enough to promote social development. In this debate some authors stated that the "social function" of science -in words of Michael Polanyi- must be revisited, especially for emerging and underdeveloped countries. The main key is to introduce new ways of bridging the gap between scientific knowledge and its use as an input towards social development.

In Argentina, the main challenge towards achieving this new "researcher profile", was to dispute both research agendas in this global context and to endure new research topics attached to specific social demands. Additionally, there has been an attempt to also introduce new ways of evaluating scientists that are not only based in publications as a mechanism to overcome the "publish of perish" phenomenon as the main way of measuring scientific performance.

Argentina's government in this context is specially focused in giving scientific knowledge a main role as an input for social development, and rethinking the position of the country's scientific public institutions by taking a more active role in defining science policies.

This paper picks up the debate between "basic" and "applied" science, the discussion about "autonomy" and "social relevance" of scientific research as a theoretical background and also includes recent theories that aim to revisit and discuss the social function by introducing a new theorical approach known as "knowledge mobilization" that presents a new and complex mean of making scientific knowledge more useful, proactive and applied.