Editorial

The complexity of the science, technology and innovation issues and the difficulty of understanding innovation policies effects, on the one hand, and the low effectiveness or undesirable effects of many of the existing policies, on the other hand, highlights the need for more precision in the formulation and selection of each element of them. designing a new policy or reviewing and criticizing proposed or existing policies, needs a framework that specify the essential elements of these policies in order to allow the analysis of the proportionality between their elements. Accordingly, these article examines the essential elements of policy programs and provides a framework for developing these programs based on these elements. Finally, the application of the proposed framework in the criticizing of existing programs is shown by reviewing the Iran’s Sixth Development Plan in the field of science and technology.