Research and Development, Human resources, R&D personnel, Researchers, EU countries, Multidimensional scaling

The paper focuses on human resources in research and development (R&D), which is one of the key indicators of the conduct of research activity. The paper aims to evaluate selected categories of human resources in research and development and their similarities in EU countries in years 2015 and 2020. The method of multidimensional scaling is applied to evaluate the structure of similarity of human resources in R&D in EU countries. The results have proved the division of the EU countries into seven groups (clusters) according to the evaluated human resources in R&D. At the same time, marked differences have been observed between some EU countries with respect to the selected categories of human resources. The results reflect the potential of the individual EU countries to ensure the quality of the performed research and are a precondition for the development of new findings and technologies.