Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas

CSIC is a State Agency with the status of a Public Research Organisation (OPI) within the General State Administration. It has a single legal personality and performs its functions through a range of organisational structures that do not have independent legal personality.
Its scientific activity is carried out through two main structures: research institutes and national centres.

Research institutes conduct scientific and technical research across all scientific disciplines and are linked to the scientific-technical areas according to their thematic focus. For the performance of their activities, they are internally organised into research groups, departments and other units as may be approved. Depending on ownership, institutes may be own (fully owned by CSIC), joint institutes (co-owned with other institutions), or associated, with independent legal personality.
For their internal functioning, institutes are provided with governing bodies (Director, Deputy Director(s), Governing Board and, in the case of joint institutes, a Steering Committee), management bodies (Management Office) and advisory bodies (Scientific Board and Scientific Advisory Committee). In addition, an Institute Assembly and an Institute Council may also be established.

National centres are research structures which, in addition to conducting research, are established as mandatory expert technical advisory bodies to public authorities. For the performance of their assigned activities, they are internally organised into research groups, departments and other approved units. They may also include specialised technical units and thematically related research institutes.

In addition to the research structures described above, there are support units, namely specialised technical units and service integration centres.
Specialised technical units provide specialised and/or cross-cutting technical or technological services to research structures and, where appropriate, may also provide services to the State.
Service integration centres are research support structures created to serve two or more CSIC institutes or structures, even if they pursue different scientific objectives or belong to different scientific-technical areas. Their purpose is to ensure unified management and coordination of common administrative, general and technical services, both internally and in coordination with the institutes and structures they support.

CSIC currently comprises 121 research institutes distributed throughout the national territory, with the exception of the Spanish School of History and Archaeology in Rome (Italy). Of these: 69 are fully owned by CSIC, 50 are joint institutes, and 2 are associated institutes. There are also three national centres (INIA, IGME and IEO).
As research support units, there are 10 service provision centres (seven fully owned and three joint), providing technical and administrative support to two or more institutes, and 4 specialised technical units (three fully owned and one joint).

CSIC Centres and Units of Excellence

The Spanish State Research Agency (Agencia Estatal de Investigación) annually awards the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence and María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence distinctions with a dual objective:

To recognise the excellence of centres and units whose scientific leadership is internationally acknowledged, which have the capacity to contribute to advancing the frontiers of knowledge, to generate high-impact results, and to attract talent.
To fund strategic research plans over a four-year period. Accreditations may be renewed for additional four-year periods upon completion.

Since 2012, 13 CSIC research institutes have been accredited as Severo Ochoa Centres of Excellence and six units have been accredited as María de Maeztu Units of Excellence, representing a total of €52,000,000 in public funding. In addition, the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, the Institute of Chemical Technology, the Institute for Theoretical Physics, the Institute of Neurosciences and the National Centre for Biotechnology have renewed their accreditation, amounting to an additional €20,000,000 in funding.
Furthermore, CSIC is a partner, together with other institutions, in the Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and in the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CSIC-IRTA-UAB-UB), which have also been accredited as Severo Ochoa Centres of Excellence. The former, ICN2, has likewise renewed its accreditation.