The Research, Integration and Utilization (RIU) model as an analytical framework for the professionalization of departmental research organizations: Case studies of publicly funded forest research institutes in Serbia and Croatia

•The RIU-model comprehensively describes activities of departmental research organizations.•The RIU-model reveals activities that stay hidden when applying other evaluation methods.•It is possible to analyze all activities of two research institutes from Serbia and Croatia with the RIU-model.•Production lines display results of the analysis and reveal organizations profile.

Policy-makers articulate a growing need for science-based policy advice that supports their decisions, especially in fields that are dependent on scientific knowledge like natural resources or forestry. Publicly funded organizations, such as departmental research institutes, have been established in many countries to provide science-based policy advice. To assess the activities of two public research institutes, namely, Serbia's Institute of Lowland Forestry and Environment (ILFE) and the Croatian Forest Research Institute (CFI), we use the new theory-based analytical model of departmental research developed by Böcher and Krott (2010). This model describes scientific policy advice as the connection between Research (R), Integration (I), and Utilization (U) — the RIU-model. Primary and secondary evidence refer to 148 ILFE and CFI projects conducted from 2005 to 2010. Our critical analysis of empirical data, which were collected through semi-structured face-to-face interviews and project documentation, shows the following: (i) it is possible to analyze all activities of the two research institutes with the RIU-model of departmental research and present the results using “production lines”; (ii) activities of ILFE and CFI can be presented by the same types of production lines revealing their similar profile; (iii) all three spheres of the RIU-model can be found in the successful ILFE and CFI projects, only the Integration sphere is found in all projects; and (iv) the RIU-model is able to describe comprehensive activities of both research institutes, which opens the possibility to improve current evaluation procedures by taking into account both practical and scientific activities and outputs.