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The effect of government contracting on academic research: Does the source of funding affect scientific output?
Abstract
The growing share of university research funded by industry has sparked concerns that academics will sacrifice traditional scholarly activities to pursue commercial goals. To investigate this concern, I examine the influence of an applied sponsor and consider limitations of the grant funding mechanism. A novel dataset tracks the careers of academic engineers and their relationships with this sponsor. I find that (a) researchers who maintain a relationship with the directed sponsor experience a decrease in publications implying that academics’ careers may be a function of the type of funding received, not only talent; (b) academic merit does not necessarily serve as a funding criterion for sponsors; and (c) citation and publication measures of academic output are often not useful proxies for short-term commercial or social value.
... There are 149 research groups with over 6,000 personnel (2,300 of which are researchers and 4,000 of which are trainees) divided into eight different scientific areas (cf. Coccia and Rolfo, 2007;2008;. This overview is the background to describe, compare and analyze the Italian case study. ...
... emphasize entrepreneurship and to supply technological services and applied research activities to firms and other external subjects (cf. Coccia and Rolfo, 2010, 2008Coccia, 2008a,b). The effects of this reform are ongoing. ...
... This type of management structure is particularly suitable when several large projects are being managed simultaneously (cf. Coccia and Rolfo, 2010, 2008Coccia, 2008a,b). created to cover the fields of agriculture and food, energy and transport, cultural identity, ICT, production systems, molecular design, medicine, materials, life science, earth and environment, and cultural heritage. ...
... However, private research grants tend to support research with short-term objectives whose results can be rapidly applied. An established concern of academics is that, when corporate money is involved, pure science can be diverted toward practical and applied problem-solving research (Beaudry & Allaoui, 2012;Funk et al., 2019;Goldfarb, 2008;Nelson, 1959). ...
... Academic engagement with industry affects scientific performance not only in quantifiable features of research productivity but also in the form of research direction (Azoulay et al., 2011). As noted previously, an established concern of academics is that, when corporate money is involved, pure science can be diverted toward practical and applied problem-solving research (Beaudry & Allaoui, 2012;Funk et al., 2019;Goldfarb, 2008;Nelson, 1959). Governmental finance is often associated with projects with broad scopes, while private research grants tend to support research with short-term objectives whose results can be rapidly applied (Aghion et al., 2008). ...
Academic engagement with industry is now practiced by more scientists than ever before. Despite broad consensus regarding the positive effect on senior and successful scientists' research productivity , its effects on early career scientists have remained insufficiently investigated. Utilizing a novel dataset drawn from both awardees and nominees in the case of high-tech enterprises' Ph. D. funding programs from 2010 to 2017, we combine difference-indifferences estimation and data mining to explore the future research impact (research productivity and direction) of industrial Ph.D. funding. We find that awardees granted industrial Ph.D. funding outperform nominees in terms of both the quantity and quality of subsequent scientific production, with a more salient improvement of research performance in developing countries. Such discernible improvement in scientific production does not come at the cost of altering the research direction of beneficiaries. The results are robust to different specifications and measurements. Practical and policy implications are discussed for entrepreneurs and science policymakers to favor scientific knowledge production and transfer by strengthening science-industry relations between high-tech enterprises and early career scientists.
... However, university-industry collaboration is challenging due to different social organization and institutional logics permeating the two contexts (i.e., different goals, norms of behavior, and reward systems) (Dasgupta & David, 1994;Foray & Steinmueller, 2003). Scholars have also argued that substantial industry involvement in academic research may limit academic freedom (Goldfarb, 2008;Slaughter et al., 2002), leading scientists to restrict communication with each other to comply with secrecy rules set by their industrial partners and the urgency to provide commercial results and make patent applications (Bodas Freitas & Nuvolari, 2012;Slaughter et al., 2002;Welsh et al., 2008). ...
... Extant literature suggests that academic inventors may worry about leaving the IP rights to patented inventions in the sole hands of industrial partners, who may monopolize the benefits from patent exploitation and sometimes do not recognize researchers' background knowledge (Sohn & Han, 2019;US District Court, 2006). Moreover, firm ownership can limit the ability of academic inventors to pursue further technology developments if the value of such developments is not evident to the firm, thus restricting academic freedom (Goldfarb, 2008) and reducing researchers' incentive to collaborate (Sohn & Han, 2019). Finally, industry-exclusive ownership of academic patents may restrict communication, creating conflicts with other researchers because of the secrecy rules adopted by firms and their interest in rushing to the patent office and reaching the market quickly (Bercovitz & Feldman, 2008;Bodas Freitas & Nuvolari, 2012;Welsh et al., 2008). ...
University–industry collaborations are an important pathway through which academic scientists engage with industry and society, co-create new knowledge, and raise funds to carry out costly research endeavors. Nonetheless, the management of such collaborations is challenging and requires universities to protect their investments in intellectual property and to capture value from them. This paper examines how scientists’ motivations to undertake inventive activities shape the relationship between research partnerships, the ownership of academic patents resulting from such partnerships, and the licensing of university-owned patents. We examine the interactions between these factors using data on 501 research projects conducted by scientists affiliated with universities located in various countries. Our analysis indicates that the inventors’ motivations bear a direct effect on the ownership and commercialization of academic patents. Moreover, these motivations positively moderate the relationship between research partnerships and the management of academic patents. These findings have interesting implications for university administrators striving to enhance the effectiveness of the technology transfer process.
... Within the framework of knowledge production research and development expenses are expected to contribute to technological innovation patents or number of products (Goldfarb, 2008). In their publications researchers bring forward new ideas, practices and findings. ...
... These research publications may be considered as a significant path in terms of university -industry interaction for the purpose of discussing and developing the implementation of academic innovations (Chang, 2012;Huang, 2009). Besides these publications universities make use of technological innovations or patents (Goldfarb, 2008). To this end they generally manufacture their innovations directly and do the marketing. ...
The study investigates the possible positive impact of organizational innovation (OI) on Intellectual Capital (IC) and blue ocean strategy (BOS) relationship in sustainable higher education. The study was carried out by emailing questionnaires to 76.616 academicians working in universities throughout Turkey and analyzing data collected from 497 samples. Due to a large population, quantitative analysis was used in this study. SPSS 24.0 and AMOS 24.0 software were used for the statistical analysis of the data. Pearson test was used to determine the correlation between the points obtained from the IC, OI and BOS scales, and the structural equation model was used in mediation analysis. The results obtained from the above-mentioned methods verify the full mediation impact of OI in the connection between IC and BOS. Making use of all previous studies this research is the first to examine the mediation impact of OI on IC and BOS connection in universities.
... Winskel et al. 2015). While we cannot study the structuring impact of funding with the data that we have herefor example, for scientific productivity (Goldfarb 2008)-we do argue that the research of individual scholars and groups is organising around themes that are of high priority in addressing grand societal challenges when it comes to energy (Royston and Foulds 2021). This chapter has started to document how individuals and groups working on these interdisciplinary projects develop joint work addressing the themes in their own ways and contexts. ...
... That increased reliance on external funding and competing for it affects research output is-or has now also become-common sense among academic scholars. Yet, empirical research has demonstrated that the outputs of researchers reliant on applied and externally-funded projects do shift in the longer term (Goldfarb 2008). Comparative studies show this especially between scholars mainly working in university-funded projects versus externally-funded projects. ...
“Even though I’ve been involved in interdisciplinary energy research for more than 20 years, this book is an eye opener for me."
– Tanja Winther, Professor, University of Oslo, Norway.
"Silvast and Foulds recuperate the critical side of social sciences and bring it into the discussions of what interdisciplinary research can be.”
– David Hess, Professor of Sociology, Vanderbilt University, USA
This Open Access book builds upon Science and Technology Studies (STS) and provides a detailed examination of how large-scale energy research projects have been conceived, and with what consequences for those involved in interdisciplinary research, which has been advocated as the zenith of research practice for many years, quite often in direct response to questions that cannot be answered (or even preliminarily investigated) by disciplines working separately. It produces fresh insights into the lived experiences and actual contents of interdisciplinarity, rather than simply commentating on how it is being explicitly advocated. We present empirical studies on large-scale energy research projects from the United Kingdom, Norway, and Finland. The book presents a new framework, the Sociology of Interdisciplinarity, which unpacks interdisciplinary research in practice. This book will be of interest to all those interested in well-functioning interdisciplinary research systems and the dynamics of doing interdisciplinarity, including real ground-level experiences and institutional interdependencies.
Antti Silvast holds a researcher position in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He is a Sociologist examining energy infrastructure, most recently smart systems, methodology, and energy modelling.
Chris Foulds is an Associate Professor at Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Sustainability Institute (Cambridge, UK). He is an interdisciplinary Environmental Social Scientist researching how society and everyday life intersect with energy policies, governance, consumption, and the built environment.
... D'autre part, l'implication dans les activités de commercialisation peut conduire les scientifiques à diminuer leur productivité scientifique. Si ceux-ci devaient consacrer un temps important dédié à la recherche, ils doivent désormais s'impliquer dans la gestion contractuelle avec l'industriel, ou se consacrer à des activités de résolution de problèmes locaux pour les industriels (Goldfarb, 2008 ;Yusuf, 2008) : c'est un coût d'opportunité pour la recherche scientifique. Toole et Czarnitzki (2010) vont même jusqu'à parler de fuite des cerveaux au profit de l'industrie : ...
... Second, the more excellent orientation towards research commercialization of entrepreneurial universities (Etzkowitz, 2003) may influence the research agenda itself and activities performed by scholars. For example, Goldfarb, (2008) showed that scientists who maintained their relationships with an applied-oriented partner, in a study on 221 scientists involved in the NASA Aerospace engineering program in 1981, experienced a decrease in publications of academic papers during their careers. Indeed, academic engagement can divert academics from research activities as they might spend more time doing other activities (problem-solving, contract management, conflict management, etc.) affecting their scientific productivity (Yusuf, 2008). ...
Les grands défis sociétaux contemporains nécessitent la création conjointe de nouveaux savoirs scientifiques et d’innovations techniques. Pourtant, les relations entretenues entre activités de recherche scientifique et activités de développement de produits, procédés ou services semblent s’apparenter à une double contrainte : l’impact scientifique s’opérerait au détriment de l’impact technique, et inversement. Pourtant, l’étude de cas historiques ou modernes permet de faire l’hypothèse d’un modèle de couplage science – industrie dit de double impact simultané. En menant une démarche exploratoire à partir des théories de la conception, de la littérature sur l’engagement académique et l’innovation combinatoire, cette thèse propose un modèle formel des conditions d’existence et des performances des relations science – industrie. Une démonstration empirique du double impact simultané est proposée à partir d’un cas d’étude dans l’industrie agroalimentaire. Le modèle formel apporte un cadre conceptuel aux quatre essais qui composent ce travail. Les deux premiers essais permettent de démontrer la dynamique historique et les performances du modèle de double impact simultané dans les sciences dites « fondamentale » (étude longitudinale des lauréats du Prix Nobel) et « appliquées » (étude des thèses CIFRE), comparativement aux cas traditionnels. Un troisième essai discute des conditions institutionnelles du modèle dans le cas de la R&D industrielle en étudiant la dynamique de l’invention dans le secteur du pétrole et du gaz. Enfin, un quatrième essai propose une réflexion sur la résilience du modèle de double impact simultané aux crises, à partir d’une analyse des effets des crises sanitaires liées aux coronavirus.
... According to Greenfield, such "embracement of the market is compromising scientific norms and commercialization (or commodification, or marketization) is in profound conflict with the function and main mission of research units and universities" [58], though being the resultthe transfer of norms and practices from the industrial to the academic sectorof the industrialization of higher education and research [59,60]; moreover, "unless [marketization of the scientific research] is halted soon, important portions of future scientific knowledge will be private property and fall outside the public domain" [61]. Goldfarb [62] argues that researchers who maintain a relationship with the sponsor of their research "experience a decrease in publications in leading international journals, implying [the danger] that academics' careers may become a function of their funding rather than their talent" [62]. ...
... According to Greenfield, such "embracement of the market is compromising scientific norms and commercialization (or commodification, or marketization) is in profound conflict with the function and main mission of research units and universities" [58], though being the resultthe transfer of norms and practices from the industrial to the academic sectorof the industrialization of higher education and research [59,60]; moreover, "unless [marketization of the scientific research] is halted soon, important portions of future scientific knowledge will be private property and fall outside the public domain" [61]. Goldfarb [62] argues that researchers who maintain a relationship with the sponsor of their research "experience a decrease in publications in leading international journals, implying [the danger] that academics' careers may become a function of their funding rather than their talent" [62]. ...
The main purpose of this study is to analyze how reorganization of public research organizations and shrinking public research lab budgets affect the evolution of research activity and scientific productivity. This study focuses on a case study of National Research Council of Italy (CNR), one of largest European public research organizations, to identify evolution of research activities and dynamics of scientific production from 2000 to 2019. The statistical analysis suggests that, in line with the origin of the CNR, scientific research focuses mainly on research fields of natural sciences, such as chemical, life and physical sciences, with an increasing role of scientific research in energy, engineering and mathematics. The study also shows a high intensity of collaboration of the CNR within international research networks. A key finding of this study is to show, for the first time, that although uncertain reforms and reductions of public funds, scientific productivity is growing. This novel result can be explained with self-determination of scholars as a vital determinant supporting scientific production that outclasses shrinking public research lab budgets and organizational deficiencies. The management and research policy implications of this study can be generalized to support an efficient organizational and managerial behavior, and higher scientific productivity of public research institutes in contexts of reduced public funding and market turbulence.
... Within the framework of knowledge production research and development expenses are expected to contribute to technological innovation patents or number of products (Goldfarb, 2008). In their publications researchers bring forward new ideas, practices and findings. ...
... These research publications may be considered as a significant path in terms of university -industry interaction for the purpose of discussing and developing the implementation of academic innovations (Chang, 2012;Huang, 2009). Besides these publications universities make use of technological innovations or patents (Goldfarb, 2008). To this end they generally manufacture their innovations directly and do the marketing. ...
The study investigates the possible positive impact of organizational innovation (OI) on Intellectual Capital (IC) and blue ocean strategy (BOS) relationship in sustainable higher education. The study was carried out by emailing questionnaires to 76.616 academicians working in universities throughout Turkey and analyzing data collected from 497 samples. Due to a large population, quantitative analysis was used in this study. SPSS 24.0 and AMOS 24.0 software were used for the statistical analysis of the data. Pearson test was used to determine the correlation between the points obtained from the IC, OI and BOS scales, and the structural equation model was used in mediation analysis. The results obtained from the above-mentioned methods verify the full mediation impact of OI in the connection between IC and BOS. Making use of all previous studies this research is the first to examine the mediation impact of OI on IC and BOS connection in universities.
... firms, public institutions, etc.). Goldfarb (2008) confirms that the growing share of research funded by industry has sparked concerns that researchers will sacrifice scientific activity to pursue commercial goals. In particular, researchers who maintain a relationship with sponsors have a decrease in publications in leading international journals. ...
... within business enterprises). Moreover, Goldfarb (2008) also states that scientific merit does not necessarily serve as a funding criterion for a sponsor, and citations or publications are often not useful proxies for short-term social value. There is always the discourse of innovation within the university setting. ...
Funding is vital for the survival of science and thereby development and sovereignty of a country and should look to the quality of the product. This paper looks at funding citations in Incites® database by Brazilian authors. Almost 70% of the documents in this study were funded by one of 10 Brazilian agencies, mainly Capes, CNPq and FAPESP. Although federal agencies (Capes and Cnpq) are important nationwide, the funding agency from São Paulo state (FAPESP) was seen to have national impact, probably due to collaboration of researchers from other states with universities in São Paulo. The impact of these agencies was lower than when science was funded by foreign sources, which were mainly North American and European. Eighty companies (primarily manufacturing and pharmaceutical) were also seen to fund research in Brazil, none being national. Clusters were formed of co-funding foreign agencies using quality indicators. Cluster separation depended mainly on journal impact factor, open/closed access and % documents in Q1 journals. Using Capes data, citation rates are also low, which may account for 30% of papers nationwide without funding information.
... Not all research projects get funding because the priorities of donor agencies and the availability of funds vary considerably (Bloch & Sørensen, 2015). For example, private funding prioritizes projects that have an immediate outcome and have little uncertainties, the same as public funding is focused to meet socioeconomic objectives (Goldfarb, 2008;OECD, 2002), putting some researchers at disproportionately high risk. This is true for funding in fundamental science (Fleming et al., 2019;Hotez, 2017;Reif, 2017). ...
This study aims to understand the perception of academic communities—both stationed in Nepal and abroad— on various aspects of research environment in Nepal and the challenges in carrying out research here. It further seeks to explore the relationship between different levels of research satisfaction, publications, funding and work experience. Here, we present the results of online questionnaire survey of 472 researchers from 47 countries who published research articles and collaborated with Nepal based researchers. A significantly high proportion of researchers stationed in Nepal reported an unfavourable research environment compared to their foreign counterparts. There were, however, no significant differences between the proportion of respondents stationed in Nepal and abroad who had favourable and neutral views on the research environment in Nepal. Researchers who were satisfied and very satisfied with their own performance had a favourable view on Nepal’s research environment. Lack of funding was the most agreed challenge among all researchers whereas “no government policies” received the most support from researchers based in foreign countries, and “no research culture”, “research facilities” obtained more responses from Nepal based researchers. With the exception of very dissatisfied ones, the number of publications, years in research experience and total funding (median) increased gradually from ‘not satisfied” to ‘very satisfied’ in both Nepal and foreign country-based researchers. Nepal based researchers published significantly fewer journal articles as lead authors compared to their foreign counterparts. They received a high proportion of funding from international grants and often self-funded their research projects. It is crucial to address funding challenges and foster a supportive research culture to enhance the research environment in Nepal.
... However, for less-developed countries, particularly those lacking large enterprises, government funding may play a more important role for scientific and technological innovation in universities. Allocation of university research funding by the government may positively impact patents, articles and other academic outputs [22,23]. It can be inferred whether the successful patent application is related to research funding. ...
This article examines the dynamics of scientific and technological innovation and cooperation in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area. It focuses on unraveling the intricate web of influences that steer patenting and transformation within 34 universities in this region. The study reveals the spatial spillover of university patent applications and delves into the nuanced choices universities make in transforming patents. The findings underscore the antecedents of university patent applications and reveal their propensity for spatial spillovers across the region. Key determinants, in particular the government funding and the economic prosperity of the region in which the university is located, do not positively affect university patent applications. Interestingly, institutional distance can assist colleges in the region in generating more patents. Moreover, the study delineates two central pathways for patent transformation within universities: one involves the strategic allocation of internal resources, while the other depends on collaborative ventures between universities and their respective regional ecosystems. This dual approach illuminates viable pathways for the evolution of university patents and provides insights into leveraging internal dynamics and fostering collaborative networks with the broader regional innovation milieu.
... Existe, também, algum receio que as Universidades se concentrem demasiado na cooperação com o tecido empresarial e acabe, à médio ou longo prazo, por esquecer a produção científica que não vise satisfazer os interesses financeiros do tecido empresarial. Além disso, sendo o objetivo principal dos docentes do ensino superior transmitir conhecimentos aos seus discípulos, para estes acadêmicos, a criação de spin-offs ou startups em parceria com as suas Universidades acaba por aumentar substancialmente a sua carga de trabalho (CHATTERTON; GODDARD, 2000), podendo levar à redução da produção científica (CARAYOL, 2003;NEL-SON, 2001, GOLDFARB, 2008 ou das oportunidades de publicar (CARAYOL, 2003). Sabe-se, também, que a taxa de sobrevivência destas startups é bastante reduzida, o que poderá originar uma redução do bem-estar financeiro dos alunos ou docentes que investirem capital nesses negócios (HOROWITZ GASSOL, 2007;LEVRATTO, 2013;ZAHRA, 1991). ...
O tema empreendedorismo tem sido incorporado em diversos projetos por instituições relevantes e com abrangência nacional. Na década que se iniciou a partir de 2011, pode-se citar o desenvolvimento do “Programa de Educação Corporativa” do Ministério da Indústria, Desenvolvimento e Comércio Exterior; a “Escola de Negócios do SEBRAE”; o “Programa de Inovação” do Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia; o financiamento de Empreendedorismo “FAPESP” para os projetos PIPE III e da ANPEI – Associação Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento das Empresas Inovadoras, todos com ofertas regulares de programas e cursos de empreendedorismo.
Nas carreiras das Universidades brasileiras, que se distribuem nas áreas de Ciências Humanas, Sociais Aplicadas, Exatas, Tecnologia e Biológicas, o tema também foi assimilado.
Temáticas transversais ou de interesse geral, independente de carreiras estruturadas na Educação Superior, têm sido desenvolvidas a partir de demandas sociais e processos derivados da internacionalização do ensino e da pesquisa. Mais recentemente, a extensão ganhou relevância e passará, obrigatoriamente, a integrar a matriz curricular em 2023.
... Nevertheless, universities must not only create new knowledge and innovative technologies but also use their knowledge to achieve social and economic goals (Metcalfe and Ramlogan 2005). This is especially true given that citation and publication indicators of academic output are often not an effective substitute for short-term business or social value (Goldfarb 2008). Hence, how to measure the economic and social performance of universities becomes very important. ...
In order to clarify whether, how and when the increasing S&T fund investment to improve innovation performance, based on the resource-based view (RBV) and panel data of key universities in China, we construct basic research intensity and experimental development intensity to analyse the functional mechanism between ‘fund investment– different intensity of research types—economic and social performance’. We found: (1) the increasing fund investment cannot improve economic performance, but has a positive relationship with social performance. (2) The fund investment of key universities can rapidly improve economic performance only if they are invested in experimental development, while investing in both basic research and experimental development can improve social performance. (3) The effect of fund investment on economic performance needs at least lagged 1 year to turn positive, while its promoting effect on social performance is significantly positive only in the first 2 years. Our research further enriches the subject category and core argument of RBV.
... Asimismo, algunos autores destacan problemas para los académicos y los estudiantes. Para los académicos, la actividad empresarial de la actividad empresarial a través de una start-up puede aumentar su carga de trabajo (Chatterton & Goddard, 2000), puede restringir la divulgación de los resultados de la investigación (Carayol, 2003) y puede limitar la productividad de la investigación o la posibilidad de publicar (Goldfarb, 2008). Tanto para los académicos como para los estudiantes, existe una pérdida potencial de bienestar económico por la quiebra, con los emprendimientos tecnológicos especialmente en riesgo (Levratto, 2013;Zahra, 2007). ...
Hoy en día, los recién graduados en ingeniería civil tienen problemas para encontrar su primer empleo a pesar de los requisitos de la titulación. La creatividad, la colaboración e inteligencia emocional son habilidades esenciales necesarias. Desgraciadamente, ninguna de ellas aparece en su plan de estudios. Este trabajo propone la creación de pequeños equipos cooperativos de estudiantes para abordar retos. La resolución colaborativa de problemas reales y la presentación de los resultados es clave para su desarrollo integral como futuros profesionales. Esta investigación muestra la necesidad del desarrollo de habilidades blandas para promover el emprendimiento y el autoempleo como oportunidades laborales.
... Existe, também, algum receio que as Universidades se concentrem demasiado na cooperação com o tecido empresarial e acabe, à médio ou longo prazo, por esquecer a produção científica que não vise satisfazer os interesses financeiros do tecido empresarial. Além disso, sendo o objetivo principal dos docentes do ensino superior transmitir conhecimentos aos seus discípulos, para estes acadêmicos, a criação de spin-offs ou startups em parceria com as suas Universidades acaba por aumentar substancialmente a sua carga de trabalho (CHATTERTON; GODDARD, 2000), podendo levar à redução da produção científica (CARAYOL, 2003;NEL-SON, 2001, GOLDFARB, 2008 ou das oportunidades de publicar (CARAYOL, 2003). Sabe-se, também, que a taxa de sobrevivência destas startups é bastante reduzida, o que poderá originar uma redução do bem-estar financeiro dos alunos ou docentes que investirem capital nesses negócios (HOROWITZ GASSOL, 2007;LEVRATTO, 2013;ZAHRA, 1991). ...
... The results of this study are consistent with these previous studies, since all the professors in cluster 1 have completed their doctoral studies in international educational institutions. Also, these professors are usually characterized by their experience, competencies, research groups and a network of contacts that help them produce remarkable results, which could be even greater if they would receive financial support to do research, according to previous studies (Goldfarb, 2008;Ebadi and Schiffauerova, 2016). For Abramo et al. (2019), it is increasingly important to develop collaborations with colleagues from their own and other universities, especially with more experienced researchers, which allows access to resources and funding for their projects. ...
The purpose of this research is to describe the research profile of university professors in Ecuador, considering their research output, individual factors (academic qualification level and period of time at the institution) and institutional factors (time invested in research). The cluster analysis was applied to a sample of 538 Ecuadorian academics. Five researcher profiles with different levels of scientific production were identified: (1) lecturers, (2) stars, (3) high potential, (4) low potential and, (5) underused. Our findings indicate that the number of hours allocated by the university for research activities per se is not a determinant of the university research output. Research results suggest that the university authorities in Ecuador should establish specific strategies, based on the five profiles, to increase individual research output. The study delivers specific guidelines for enhancing decisions about the allocation of resources to improve individual research output in the universities.
... As for the relationship between government and industrial funding to universities, they can be strategic substitutes or complements (Arrow, 1993). Studies point out that whether it substitutes for or complements external funding from research activities is mainly an empirical question (Goldfarb, 2008;Muscio et al., 2013). Fan et al. (2019) investigated the impact of funding sources-government and industry-on university-industry collaboration performance using a sample of 146 Taiwanese universities. ...
Industrial funding eases the pressure on universities to raise research funding and actively contribute to university–industry (U–I) collaboration. However, whether industrial funding facilitates university technology transfer remains an open question, and we lack an understanding of the mechanisms that moderate this linkage. This study presents a framework and empirical analysis of the relationship between industrial funding and university technology transfer. Moreover, we examined the role of intellectual property rights (IPR) enforcement in moderating the focal relationship. We constructed a unique database by linking university- and province-level data, applying negative binomial regression analysis, finding that higher industrial funding has a positive effect on the promotion of U–I technology transfer. Furthermore, the results show that IPR enforcement significantly moderates the focal relationship. Our study highlights the role of industrial funding and offers implications for policymakers focusing on strengthening IPR enforcement in developing countries.
... Generally, the skills of high-quality teams must be nourished. Nevertheless, the call for proposal logic frequently leads to look for themes obeying novelty more than creates skills effective mobilization conditions (Goldfarb 2008). Research construction based on duration is neither opposed to responsiveness nor to new situations adaptation. ...
In this study, we analyze first the origins of excellence strategy are evoked, highlighted by the European Community in the prolongation of its 2000 Lisbon Agenda affirming the Strategic. Second, we analyze excellence in Omani national research strategy 2008–2020 then excellence in the Private University research strategy where we discussed why the predominant use of excellence criteria has bias and risk. A pyramid of research skills exists where researchers and the laboratory of excellence are at the vertex: we wonder about the relationship that should be developed between the base and the top of this pyramid, from equity and efficiency perspectives. Finally, we propose a reflection on good practices to reach top-level research, emphasizing collaborative ethics and shared values. We ask then the question of researchers' responsibilities, especially those who are well-known, in raising the whole society's capacity to progress through intelligence and knowledge.
... Generally, the skills of high-quality teams must be nourished. Nevertheless, the call for proposal logic frequently leads to look for themes obeying novelty more than creates skills effective mobilization conditions (Goldfarb 2008). Research construction based on duration is neither opposed to responsiveness nor to new situations adaptation. ...
The transition toward green energy is currently a dominant paradigm in energy-related public policies. This article aimed to provide an overview of the energy transition in Qatar and more specifically to assess the state's performance in terms of energy diversification. The methodology is based on a documentary research and a comparative analysis between existing practices in Qatar and global benchmarks. We observed that Qatar's new energy policy is based on a logic of development that takes into account the evolution of its society, its industrialization and energy consumption. The research also concluded that policymakers and Qatari government are becoming more and more aware of the threats reported by environmentalists. We would recommend that the Qatari government set up policies that promote the reduction of CO2 emissions. This can be achieved by increasing the reliance on the use of solar energy in electricity production. The government should also adopt policies that impose stabilization of gas consumption and promote the use of green energy on a large scale. On the other hands, the imposition of a tax on CO2 emissions would slow down the overexploitation of gas in favor of renewable energies.
... It may be true that the amount of the grant has a weak correlation with the performance of lecturers' scientific publications [5]. Both the amount and type of funding sponsors become a barrier for policymakers to boost the number of lecturers' scientific publications [10]. Improving the scientific atmosphere by encouraging lecturers to conduct a research project with international academics becomes one of Unesa postgraduate program policies. ...
... But the matter is also manifest in mundane project life and outputs: our materials show scholars routinely referring to broad academic disciplines as one homogenous entity and thereby with reference to a singular name (e.g. Mathematics, Statistics, Engineering, and Social Sciences), as part of them making sense of their own work in relation to others (Foulds et al. 2017). ...
UK academic researchers have been vying for a ‘whole’ systems perspective on energy issues for more than a decade. This research programme has exposed challenges in complex systems thinking and in the dialogue between academic disciplines and epistemic cultures that is needed to mediate the social, technological, and environmental impacts of energy systems. This chapter examines these efforts starting from existing studies that include detailed reports on experiences of interdisciplinary research. By extending these findings via interviews and ethnographic research, this chapter pays particular attention to the role of interdisciplinary computer modelling that was expected to represent complex energy transitions and energy infrastructures of the future. In doing so, this chapter demonstrates how interdisciplinarity has actually worked in three exemplary areas: the diversity of computer models that seek to represent everyday energy demand and how they simplify both demand and other disciplines in so doing; the need for collaborative, cross-cutting research in foresight of future energy scenarios; and how modelling scholars strongly envision their models should become ‘useful’ for imagined policy and planning stakeholders.
... That increased reliance on external funding and competing for it affects research output is-or has now also become-common sense among academic scholars. Yet, empirical research has demonstrated that the outputs of researchers reliant on applied and externally-funded projects do shift in the longer term (Goldfarb 2008). Comparative studies show this especially between scholars mainly working in university-funded projects versus externally-funded projects. ...
In building upon the cases presented in Chaps. 10.1007/978-3-030-88455-0_2 , 10.1007/978-3-030-88455-0_3 , and 10.1007/978-3-030-88455-0_4 , we develop a Sociology of Interdisciplinarity that draws our empirical insights together with resources from Science and Technology Studies (STS), in addition to Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, Research Policy, Infrastructure Studies, Anthropology, and Philosophy of Science. The key novelty of this framework is using STS insights to unpick the dynamics and consequences of interdisciplinary science, which distinguishes us from decades of earlier interdisciplinarity studies and gaps in understanding. Moreover, we not only focus on individual scholars and their experiences but pay careful attention to the wider contexts of interdisciplinary research, such as the impacts of funding structures, different access to resources, and power relations. We are careful in our approach so that our units of analyses—which vary from research groups and projects to whole epistemic communities and research policies—are most appropriate for the problem definitions that we put forward. The framework rests on a set of six dimensions, which we discuss in relation to current debates in the literature and our empirical analyses.
... Additionally, the higher the career age of a scientist, the more the research environment is established and the higher the career status is in general. As discussed by previous studies, the status of university scientists (i.e., professorship) is likely to associate with the extent to which the scientist's research activity is influenced by external components such as funding source (Arora & Gambardella, 2005;Goldfarb, 2008;Wang et al., 2018). Meanwhile, the mandatory retiree age is longer for academic staff in private universities than the national universities; therefore, the average academic age of PUS could be higher than that for the NUS. ...
Stimulating the university’s scientific research while encouraging the commercial use of the resulting knowledge is one of the foremost missions to science policymakers. This study examines the short-term impact of joint institutional changes for facilitating the commercial use of university knowledge and stimulating scientific research activities by introducing a research performance evaluation system on the university scientists’ research outcomes. Our empirical analysis is based on Japan’s national university reform in 2004, which introduced institutional measures to support the income-generating activities of academic staff while implementing a regular evaluation of their performance. Using data on over 5,000 scientists in Japan’s national and private universities, we find an increase in the research productivity among national university scientists without a significant change in their research quality by this institutional change. Moreover, we find evidence showing that the reform induced more scientists to engage in research that serves as a knowledge input for developing technological applications. These short-term effects are specific to the scientists in the Life Science domain and those who were inactive in developing technical applications before the reform. We discuss the contributions of the present study to the strain of literature on how an institutional change to encourage commercial use of university knowledge affects science and draw the implications for science policy therein.
... A few simple examples of notable externalities that may influence a researcher's orientation include funding opportunities and industry collaboration (e.g. Goldfarb, 2008;Gulbrandsen & Smeby, 2005), institutional objectives (e.g. Prasad et al., 2019), political and social pressures (e.g. ...
Collaborative research has become increasingly prominent since the mid-20th century. This article aspires to offer a fundamental ontology of a multidisciplinary research system. As a point of departure, we consider disciplinarity as a restricted language code as noted by Bernstein. The impetus for collaboration is found in a research problem's transcendence of disciplinary bounds. This article makes several propositions that diverge from the consensus position regarding the formation and dynamics of a multidisciplinary system. Most notably that such a system adheres to the constituent elements of what could be regarded as a complex system, including an ensemble of elements, interactions between these elements, local disorder followed by the emergence of robust order and system memory. We propose that the internal communications and subsequent self-organization of such a system may be conceptualized as orientation signals, or 'stigmergy', analogous to those observed in swarms. System robustness, we argue, is a function of the individual researcher's local autonomy and is, paradoxically, augmented by the weakness of communications across disciplinary bounds, along with the lack of central organization and the emphasis on research novelty. System memory, we argue, manifests itself in the ability of a researcher to change her/his route of inquiry, based on environmental feedback, whereby new information becomes incorporated into the adjusted research methodology. We propose that an emergent intelligence, at the level of the system, expresses itself in the unconcealment of the 'form' of the metaproblem. The theoretical model is empirically illustrated using, as an example, the contemporary field of renewable energy research, which is an area primed for collaborative research. It is anticipated that an improved understanding of multidisciplinary research systems provides insights into certain strengths particular to less integrated and self-organized forms of collaborative research along with a framework with which to improve the design and fostering of such systems.
... An analogous set of issues holds for the markets for technology (Arrow, 1962;Nelson, 1959). How well markets for technology are able to function depends on a number of factors, including the nature of knowledge, intellectual property rights regime, and related institutions (Arora et al., 2001;Dushnitsky, 2010;Dushnitsky and Lenox, 2005;Dushnitsky and Shaver, 2009;Elfenbein, 2007;Goldfarb, 2008). We discuss possible extensions that include such issues in the discussion section. ...
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108073/1/smj2159.pdf
... They are mostly user-oriented and address social or economic challenges rather than purely academic research, leading to output with lower academic impact. In a study on government contracting in the aeronautic domain, Goldfarb (2008) found that researchers maintaining a relationship with the sponsor experienced a decrease in publications. Other studies concluded that, although funds directly distributed by the U.S. congress were positively associated with publications, no such relationship could be found for citations (Payne 2002, Payne & Siow 2003. ...
... Due to the limited number of public and university grants in many countries, researchers are focusing on funding opportunities from the private sector, bringing together various discussions (Goldfarb, 2008). While it is argued that research funded by private sector gains closer ties with the industry (Bozeman and Gaughan, 2007;Muscio et al., 2013) on the other hand, this resource dependency may lead researchers to focus on the expectations of funders and may weaken research independence. ...
Purpose: The purpose of the empirical study is to test the technology acceptance model constructs in the context of science crowdfunding with the moderating effect of Individual Entrepreneurial Orientation.
Methodology: The study tested the relationships between technology acceptance model constructs with the moderating effect of Individual Entrepreneurial Orientation with path analysis. 152 valid responses were gathered from an online survey conducted between September 2019-February 2020 and the data was analysed with Smart PLS 3.0 software.
Findings: The results show that the performance expectancy has a positive effect on the behavioural intention to use science crowdfunding. Moreover, social influence has the strongest effect on the behavioural intention. Regarding the interaction effects, when the academics possess more innovativeness, risk-taking and proactiveness thus individual ent-repreneurial orientation exists, the effect of social influence on the behavioral intention is much stronger
Practical Implications: The overall structural model suggests that in a limited research funding environment, when academics are exposed to science crowdfunding options in a positive and systematic manner, they might be open for starting crowdfunding research projects in this medium because of the social influence. If the academics possess an entrepreneurial profile, they will engage more in the science crowdfunding efforts, which may be effective in the project funding success.
Originality: Although entrepreneurial orientation has been used to explain technology acceptance behaviour and technology acceptance model has been used to understand crowdfunding behaviour, this study is the first initiative to measure how individual entrepreneurial orientation of academics will shape their technology acceptance behaviour in science crowdfunding which is critical for entrepreneurial academics to access alternative funds in order to eliminate financial constraints for their innovative and entrepreneurial endeavours.
... The literature on valorization has, in general, payed little attention to the relation with research funding and, in particular, on the different impact of various sources of funding (Goldfarb, 2008;Rosli & Rossi, 2016). We propose that this relation is instead crucial. ...
In recent years, the growing interest of universities in valorization of research activities (tipically through technology transfer—patenting and licensing—and academic entrepreneurship) has generated a debate on its impact on scientific knowledge production. There have been controversies on the potentially negative effect of university research valorization on public research, in terms of quality, long term vs short term orientation, and accessibility. The debate has been traditionally framed in terms of substitution vs complementarity between public research and valorization. In this paper we argue that the key to understand the relation between public research and valorization lies in the role of research funding, particularly: (a) competitive public research funding; (b) third party commercial funding. If the funding system (both public and private) takes the value of academic research as signal of quality, then high quality researchers are able to attract extra-funds beyond ordinary endowment. In turn, these additional funds can be used as a source to organize an effective and long-term division of labor in laboratories in order to support inventions and licensing (patents) and entrepreneurial activities (spin-off companies). In this case academic quality and commercialization are strong complement and positive feedback loops are generated. This interpretation on the role of funding is strongly supported by original data from the Italian Evaluation of Research Quality VQR 2011–2014 dataset. The paper is based on a unique and novel dataset, that integrates data on valorization of research activities at individual and institutional level on all the Italian universities and microdata on research quality on 32,616 researchers in STEM disciplines.
... Though we acknowledge that academic entrepreneurship represents an idiosyncratic form of employee entrepreneurship, we extend this work by shedding light on the consequences of entrepreneurship by employees in public science, and specifically, the effects on their performance in their standard organizational roles. Extant work has found that entrepreneurship by academic scientists is detrimental (2010); identified as possible explanation by Buenstorf (2009) Applied projects divert talent from fundamental research Goldfarb (2008) Note. The "+" and "−" signs indicate that a given explanation poses a positive and negative effect of becoming an entrepreneur on a scientist's research, respectively (as measured by research productivity or impact). ...
We study how becoming an entrepreneur affects an academic scientist’s research. We propose that entrepreneurship will shift scientists’ attention away from intra-disciplinary research questions and toward new bodies of knowledge relevant for downstream technology development. This will propel scientists to engage in exploration, meaning they work on topics new to them. In turn, this shift toward exploration will enhance the impact of the entrepreneurial scientist’s subsequent research, as concepts and models from other bodies of knowledge are combined in novel ways. Entrepreneurship leads to more impactful research, mediated by exploration. Using panel data on the full population of scientists at a large research university, we find support for this argument. Our study is novel in that it identifies a shift of attention as the mechanism underpinning the beneficial spill-over effects from founding a venture on the production of public science. A key implication of our study is that commercial work by academics can drive fundamental advances in science.
... However, governmental funds are not located. As viewing the subject from a different angle, Goldfarb (2008) has examined the effect of governmental contractings on academic research and evaluated the research production function. Result of that study showed that there is no effect for researchers who conduct research on superior level output. ...
ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to investigate the asymmetric effects of unanticipated interest rate shocks on real production and inflation in Turkey from 2003:01 to 2019:09 by means of non-linear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model. For that purpose, assuming that the interest rate is determined by means of the Taylor rule, the changes in interest rate were decomposed into anticipated and surprise components. NARDL enables us to observe the asymmetric effects of monetary policy in terms of the size of shocks and the stance of the shocks. The findings of this study support the idea that, in Turkey, while unanticipated monetary policy shocks have symmetric effects on production, their effects on inflation are asymmetric. Regarding the direction of the policy, positive and negative interest rate changes exert a significant positive effect on inflation. Regarding the size of monetary policy, only big shocks have a considerable effect on inflation. Augmented central bank reaction function with asymmetric relationship might enrich information for policymakers and improve the effectiveness of monetary policy.
Keywords: Non-linear ARDL, Asymmetric Monetary Policy, Turkey
JEL Classification: E52, E58, C13, C52.
... However, governmental funds are not located. As viewing the subject from a different angle, Goldfarb (2008) has examined the effect of governmental contractings on academic research and evaluated the research production function. Result of that study showed that there is no effect for researchers who conduct research on superior level output. ...
Although the literature on the spread and the effects of COVID-19 disease is vast, the studies considering the spatial dimension are limited. The existence of spatial autocorrelation, however, can bias the results, so the policy implementations would change. To fill this gap, this paper presents a spatial exploratory analysis of the confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths for the Turkish provinces. The main metholodogy depends on Moran’s I statistic, local indicator of spatial autocorrelation and Moran scatter plots. In the computation of these tests and plots, two geographical and four economic spatial weight matrix definitions are employed and compared. The findings indicate the existence of high spatial autocorrelation in the spread of cases and deaths. İstanbul and İzmir lead the confirmed cases in the time of analysis. Ankara shows high spatial autocorrelation, however, when the distance among the provinces is defined based on population. The results also show that geographical spatial weight matrix definitions may not always best describe the relationships among the spatial units. Instead, economic definitions may be necessary.
... There are several possible explanations for these findings. Research that receives funding is usually required to demonstrate to the funding body that is has received ethical approval, which could influence the standardization of research processes to facilitate funded studies (Goldfarb, 2008). Conversely, the cost of obtaining ethical approval could deter researchers in seeking ethical review if funds were not available for this (Crooks, Colman, & Campbell, 1996). ...
Background:
Child health research comprises complex ethical considerations. Understanding the extent to which the ethical process is reported in child health research is needed to improve reporting.
Aims:
To identify reportage of ethical considerations in child health research in leading nursing and paediatric journals.
Methods:
All child health research published between 2015 and 2019 in 10 leading nursing journals and two paediatric journals were retrieved and critically appraised for the reportage of informed consent and ethical approval.
Results:
Eight hundred and fifty-one child health research papers were included. Although 544 (79.9%) of the prospective studies mentioned informed consent, only 300 (55.2%) reported that written informed consent was obtained from the participants. Overall, 748 (87.9%) of child health research papers noted obtaining research ethics committee approval. Articles that mentioned financial support were significantly more likely to report informed consent and ethical approval than unfunded studies (all P < 0.001). Prospective studies showed higher rates of reportage of ethical approval compared to retrospective studies (P = 0.027). Rates of child consent (assent) obtained in different age groups of children ranged from 29.6% to 66.3%.
Conclusion:
Despite improvements in the reportage of ethical review and approval processes in child health research, consistent and transparent reports are still lacking.
In this paper, we present the results of a study that examines the role of data in nonprofit advocacy work. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 individuals who play critical roles in the data work of 18 different advocacy organizations. Our analysis reveals five key stakeholders in advocacy data work-beneficiaries, policymakers, funding and partner organizations, gatekeepers, and local publics. It also contributes a framework of four functions of data work in nonprofit organizations-data as amplifier, activator, legitimizer, and incubator. We characterize the challenges in data work that exist, particularly in widespread attempts to reappropriate data work across functions. These challenges in reappropriation are often rooted in participants' effects to enact data feminist principles from the margins of the data economy. Finally, we discuss how nonprofit institutions operate outside of the dominant data work goals known as the three Ss (surveillance, selling, and science) and propose a fourth S, social good, that is working to challenge the norms of the data economy and should be considered in research regarding the data economy moving forward.
University-industry collaboration is an interdisciplinary and multifaceted approach that aims to build a knowledge stock and improve through interaction by promoting information and technology exchange between higher education systems and the industry. University and industry have different motivations specific to their own interests. For instance, accessing to funding and empirical data from sector, development of research and teaching operations, and reputation enhancement are main motivations for universities, whereas accessing the scientific and technological knowledge, tapping to qualified personnel, gaining access to equipment and facilities of university, gaining benefit to public funding, decreasing R & D costs, and providing knowledge sharing with present personnel are the typical motivations of industry. In this chapter, the role of stakeholders in university-industry collaboration and their interactions were explained. As both partners have different aims and motivations, the potential benefits and challenges for both partners were mentioned. Then, the crucial points to take into consideration for successful collaboration were emphasized, and the importance of technology transfer offices (TTOs) on this collaboration was more detailed. In the light of this information, recommendations for future interactions were presented.KeywordsIndustryUniversityUniversity-industry collaborationKnowledge transferInnovation development
We examine the distribution of federal research and development funding across the academy early in the researcher’s pipeline. We use a unique program, the US National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), to document diversity and disparity in allocation and assess the relative impact of federal funding across four different academic divisions that include engineering, life sciences, math and physical sciences, and social sciences and psychology. After controlling for disciplinary differences in research practices, we find that the impact of federal funding yields similar rates and impact of research. However, we document disparity in how federal funding is allocated across the country to institutions and individuals. Together, these findings prompt a discussion around the trade-offs of funders focusing on national priorities or broadening participation. We conclude with recommendations for the GRFP.
Universities play an important role in any scientific and technological innovation system. Previous studies have indicated that more generous public research funding resulted in higher research output in universities. Our study, however, proposes that the positive impact of public funds is much weaker in less-prestigious universities than in prestigious ones, and that overdependence on public research funding in fact even hurts academic output quality in less-prestigious universities. We find evidence for this claim in a dataset from among Chinese 622 universities in the period 2010–2017. The negative correlation between high dependence on public research funding and academic output quality is not uniform but depends on specific conditions. It is likely to be weaker in less-prestigious research-oriented universities and in less prestigious universities dedicated to fundamental research. Moreover, we find that for them collaboration with top universities and a high proportion of senior scientists can mitigate the negative impact that high dependence on public research funding has on academic output quality and improve the efficiency in the spending of public funds. Our study contributes to the literature by highlighting differences between prestigious and less-prestigious universities in terms of how public funds affect academic output and by evaluating the impact of government involvement in scientific research at the university-level and it is the first study globally to do so.
The management of research productivity is central to university governance and drives a broad range of decisions, including those on hiring, promotion and funding allocation. Policymakers and academic leaders responsible for improving their institutions’ research performance need an evidence-based understanding of the organizational factors that can be managed in pursuit of better publication outcomes. Our paper reviews the empirical evidence on the drivers of research productivity that can be actively managed by organizations and policymakers. Such drivers include organizational structures, research culture, features of task environment for academic work, and resource allocation. To advance the state of science in research productivity literature, we then analyze assumptions and highlight mechanisms that need to be explored in order to improve theoretical and methodological state of the field. We suggest directions for future research with the aim to create a deeper and more cohesive body of knowledge on how organizations, funding bodies, and government agencies can influence scientific performance at the individual level. To advance the practice of research management, we offer a rigorous synthesis of existing empirical evidence that can help academic leaders in supporting and developing faculty research productivity within their institutions.
Although we know it is researchers at the micro‐level of universities that are the critical actors in acquiring external grant funding, it remains unclear to what extent universities provide a funding environment that suitably supports their pursuit and management of this funding. We address this subject through interviews with 41 publicly funded principal investigators (PIs) across four universities in New Zealand. We develop a grounded model that details an important distinction and void between funding success at the individual researcher level and having an effective funding environment at the institutional level. We also uncover a number of micro‐institutional level challenges based on the experiences of PIs and show how they are related to three reinforcing components that together, we further argue, comprise the university research funding environment: (1) pre‐grant funding support, (2) project implementation support, and (3) post‐grant recognition and motivation. Our findings offer a platform to develop dedicated policies and support structures within university strategies that are more explicitly focused on providing an effective institutional level funding environment. We make the case that these policies and supports must be tailored to meet the distinct needs of researchers at different stages of the funding process and with different levels of funding experience.
In this paper, we employ the propensity score matching (PSM) strategy and difference-in-differences (DID) strategy to investigate the changes in the research strength of non-211-Project universities after being co-managed by local governments and the Ministry of Education. The results show that the number of publications of non-211-Project universities has experienced a significant decline since the universities began to be co-managed by local governments and the Ministry of Education. This finding has been proven to be robust. Non-211-Project universities have undoubtedly been supported with more research resources after being co-managed by local governments and the Ministry of Education. However, the R&D total factor productivity (TFP) of research resources has experienced a significant decline. The latter negative impact on publications is greater than the former positive impact. This has led to a situation whereby these universities have experienced a decline in the number of publications after being co-managed. This study reveals the unintended consequences of additional support on the publications of non-211-Project universities. Therefore, improving the R&D TFP will be conducive to increasing the number of publications of non-211-Project universities.
We study the effect of political power on resource allocation for knowledge production dictated by central planning in a non-market system. Our empirical results suggest that, compared to non-connected scholars, political connected (PC) scholars have 15.7% more allocation granted by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). Variations in grant allocation is related to weaker institutional environments, less reputable universities, and hard-to-value project. Additional analysis suggests that access to the NSFC fund not only benefits individual PC scholars in terms of their research quality, but also brings more high-impact publications for their affiliated institution.
Objective: The purpose of this paper is to identify different components that can help to determine the effect of study findings and to identify different methodologies as well. To clarify the extent of the study on the impact assessment of funded initiatives in various countries, a systematic literature review is carried out. Methodology: It is important to consider the effects of scientific findings to achieve value for the resources spent in science and technology. A systematic literature review (SLR) is carried out to gain a detailed understanding of the different literature available in the area of assessment of the search results of the projects funded. A total of 72 papers are collected from Google scholars to perform the SRL, which are screened according to the requirements for inclusion and exclusion. Further 20 papers, primarily focusing on two study fields, namely the academic and health care industries, are accepted. The 20 papers chosen are mapped accordingly based on the market, country of origin, variables, and approaches used by different authors. Conclusion: To determine the most significant variables commonly used by numerous writers in their studies, a systematic literature review is undertaken. The methodologies used by writers in their studies are also identified in this study. This paper can also be used by other researchers to describe in their studies the components and methodologies commonly used. Originality/Value: The current research assists policymakers in making decisions on which components to examine when assessing funded initiatives that improve the effects, quality, and productivity in the higher educational sectors, and there has been relatively limited research in this field.
Given that venturing into unknown territory carries substantial risk, scientists do not take the decision to enter a new field lightly. This paper analyzes a broad set of factors associated with the risks and rewards from entry into new-to-the-researcher scientific fields, including individual capacities and preferences as well as incentives stemming from career progression and access to funding. Using a panel of researchers in biomedical sciences and science and engineering from a large European research university, we find that productivity affects new field entry as such but is not associated with entry into fields that are very distant to one’s current expertise. Scientists in more senior ranks, with larger co-author networks and collaborating with PhD students, are more likely to enter new fields, but these factors do not represent an additional push to enter very remote fields. Such “long jumps” are more likely to be made by above-average talented rather than merely productive researchers. Finally, accounting for its endogeneity, we find that funding does not make new field entry more likely.
This paper explores the impacts of basic research and applied research on the universities’ innovation capabilities and examines the role of private research funding. First, this paper divides universities’ innovation capabilities into scientific innovation capabilities and technological innovation capabilities according to the Pasteur’s quadrant paradigm. Second, based on a survey of 61 universities directly under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education of China, this study conducts an empirical analysis using the partial least squares path model. The results indicate that the complementary or substitutable effect of basic research and applied research on the promotion of universities’ innovation capabilities is different in the two dimension. Furthermore, the private research funding negatively moderates the effect of applied research on universities’ innovation capabilities, as well as the two dimensions. The paper provides quantitative evidence for Chinese practice from universities’ perspective and proposes recommendations for future development.
Purpose
Beyond contributing to literature, research findings are expected to reinforce existing best practices while also serving as a springboard for formulating new and more efficient methods of undertaking economic activities. However, academic research is sometimes divorced from implementation and research findings are not always translated into practice. This study, therefore, assesses the impact of real estate research activities and findings on the practice of real estate surveying and valuation in Nigeria as the largest real estate market in Africa.
Design/methodology/approach
An online questionnaire survey was conducted to obtain relevant data from Estate Surveyors and Valuers across the country. The survey questions cover reading of academic papers from the field of real estate and the reasons for doing so; whether they have made any changes to their professional practice based on findings from academic papers; and possible barriers to adoption academic research findings in your practice. Mean score ranking and principal component analysis were employed for data analysis.
Findings
Out of a total of 61 participants, only 35 have made a change to their professional practice based on findings from academic papers they have read. “Personal development and enlightenment” ranks first on the list of reasons for reading academic papers among the participants while barriers to the adoption of academic research findings relate mainly to education, dissemination and lack of guidance on how to apply research findings.
Practical implications
The study demonstrates how findings from real estate research are being applied and identifies possible barriers that must be addressed to improve the level of application and consequently, the value of academic studies.
Originality/value
The study provides evidence on barriers to the adoption of academic research and contributes to the global effort to bridge the gap between academia and practice.
We examine the impediments to scientific integrity with an analysis of the water science-policy interface for the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB), Australia. We highlight the dangers to the public interest of ‘administrative capture’ of science, whereby scientists are incentivised to narrow or close down the scientific questions asked, the debates on evidence, and the scientific dialogue so to support predetermined policy actions. Administrative capture of science is not intended to be objective or disinterested and contributes to a diminution of trust in science and scientists. Using an integrative theoretical framework for analysis of the different stances taken by scientists in science-policy interactions, we show how scientists as Issue Advocates have sought to limit debate and the options available in relation to water reform in the MDB. We provide six possible actions to reduce administrative capture that encourages scientists to become Issue Advocates. These actions include procedural, professional, evaluative, judicial, instrumental and external controls that support scientific integrity by individuals and agencies that use and/or undertake publicly-funded research.
This paper measures the impact of external R&D funding on the career trajectory and research productivity of graduate students across the divisions of life sciences, math & physical sciences, engineering, and social sciences & psychology. We contribute to the understanding of the production of science by examining the training regimen for graduate students. We exploit variation between 3,678 awardees and honorable mentions of the U.S. National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program. We find consistent evidence that the award increases degree completion, placement in a post-doctoral or academic research position, research productivity and impact, and network size. We further explore the role of the graduate advisor in this training process and find the award does not disrupt the apprenticeship model, but instead, increases the student's interaction with their advisor.
The theoretical model developed in this article predicts that collaboration with top-funded scientists positively affects the number of scientific publications of an individual scientist. Having combined data on funding and publication of Quebec scientists, this article empirically tests the theoretical predictions. This article examines numerous definitions of top-funded scientists as those in the top 10 per cent, or top 5 per cent in terms of total funding, funding from the public sector, and funding from the private sector. The results show that collaborating with such top-funded scientists has a positive effect on a scientist’s number of publications, hence confirming our theoretical predictions.
Universities are complex and diversified institutions. Besides education and
research, universities have now been assigned a new role of academic research
commercialisation. Universities are pressurised to act as a bridge for transferring of
knowledge to industries and generate resources. Commercialisation of academic
research is still a new phenomenon for universities in Pakistan. Universities are facing
challenges and difficulties in managing commercialisation activities along with teaching
and research. In order to overcome these challenges, some support structures have been
introduced in the form of Office of Research, Innovation and Commercialisation
(ORIC). The core rationale of this study is to explore the commercialisation activities in
universities of Pakistan. Pakistani universities have support structures in the form of
ORIC but still lacking behind in commercialisation activities. Qualitative research
strategy and semi-structured interviews technique have been adopted. In this study two
vice chancellors, higher education commission director, fifteen academic researchers
and five ORIC managers were interviewed in five leading universities of Rawalpindi
and Islamabad, Pakistan. Content analysis has been used to analyse the data. The results
shows that major obstacles in academic research commercialisation in Pakistan are
applied and basic research culture, research budgetary constraints, immature industry,
unstable political condition of the country and lack of qualified staff in ORIC. Based on
the finding of the research, some recommendations have been proposed for successful
commercialisation. A best practice model has been proposed for ORIC, Pakistan to
follow.
This paper investigates the relationship between patenting and publishing at the project level. It uses Japan’s Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research database. Japan’s Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research is the major funding source for academic researchers in Japan. This database provides information on inputs (budget, period, project members, etc.) and outputs (publications and patents) from each funded research project. The main finding is that patenting has a curvilinear correlation with higher impact, i.e. the number of higher impact publications from funded research projects increases with the number of patents only to a certain amount, and after a peak, it decreases. Our finding implies that if a finding is a relatively significant and marketable breakthrough, researchers who have the possibility of patenting in mind become less likely to share their results openly. Meanwhile, previous studies implicitly assumed that researchers have to make a choice between basic or applied research projects, or for a particular research project choose to make it more applied or basic. Another finding of this study is that the assumption applies to projects. Our findings imply that a heavy emphasis on patenting may reduce the amount of high-quality publishing of scientific research.
The increase of entrepreneurial activity within academia has raised concerns that the research orientation of universities might become ‘contaminated’ by the application-oriented needs of industry. Empirical evidence on this concern is scarce and ambiguous. We examine whether entrepreneurial and scientific performance in academia can be reconciled. Our empirical findings (KU Leuven, Belgium) suggest that both activities do not hamper each other; engagement in entrepreneurial activities coincides with increased publication outputs, without affecting the nature of the publications involved. As resources increase, this interaction becomes more significant, pointing towards a Matthew-effect.We finally suggest that balancing both activities further depends on the institutional policies deployed.
This paper studies an unusually rich data set of all the 1473 applications to the NSF in economics during 1985-1990. It provides a rare opportunity to analyze not only the characteristics of the researchers whose application was accepted (414 applications in our sample), but also those whose applications were rejected. This implies that one can investigate the impact of an NSF grants on the research output (quality-adjusted publications) of individual researchers. Using non-parametric techniques, as well as more conventional regression analyses, we find that the NSF effect is modest, apart for the more junior scholars. We also address some ancillary questions, like the factors that affect the NSF selection process and the decision about the size of the grants.
Universities are engaging in more licensing and patenting activities than ever before, and the amount of research funded by industry is increasing. Academics' commercialization activities may inhibit traditional academic scholarship. If the output of such scholarship is an important input into technological innovation and economic growth, then such an inhibition would be cause for concern. We introduce new instruments and techniques and demonstrate them using a novel panel dataset of academic electrical engineers from Stanford University. We find no evidence that engaging in inventive activity reduces the quantity of scientific output and some evidence that it increases its quality.
This paper explores issues related to the impact of Science-Industry relationships on the knowledge production of academic research groups, in particular on the alleged shift to the more applied research end under the influence of business partners' needs. Our findings from a case study of the Belgian Katholieke Universiteit Leuven ((K.U. Leuven) show a significant steady growth over time of publications produced by academic research groups involved in University-Industry linkages, closely related to factors both internal and external to the university that have stimulated academic entrepreneurial behaviour. On an aggregated level for 1985-2000, basic research publications appear to be more present than applied ones, both in total numbers and in growth rates. Our findings show that applied and basic research publications generally rose together in the same year. No clear and generalised evidence of a shift towards the applied research end determined by the involvement in U-I linkages was found, the weak indications of such a shift within groups coming only for groups that have already high applied versus basic orientation. These results suggest that the academic research groups examined have developed a record of applied publications without affecting their basic research publications and, rather than differentiating between applied and basic research publications, it is the combination of basic and applied publications that consolidate the group's R&D potential. Accordingly, critical assessments of the University side of the emerging 'Triple Helix' need to take into account the dynamic nature of the research dimension.
A robust finding in all studies is that citations are a positive and significant determinant of earnings over almost all of the observed range of citation levels. The marginal value of a citation (when the level of citations is zero) varies between $50 and $1,300. Some differences in marginal values may be due to differences in citation practices among disciplines while others may be due to differences among the studies in the control variables included in the salary regressions. Finally, no gain in explanatory power results from the inclusion in the salary regression of the costly nonfirst-author citation measure.
We use the Survey of Doctorate Recipients to examine the question of who in US universities is patenting. Because standard methods of estimation are not directly applicable, we use a zero-inflated negative binomial model to estimate the patent equation, using instruments for the number of articles to avoid problems of endogeneity. We also estimate the patent model using the generalized method of moments estimation of count data models with endogenous regressors. We find work context and field to be important predictors of the number of patent applications. We also find patents to be positively and significantly related to the number of publications. This finding is robust to the choice of instruments and method of estimation. The cross-sectional nature of the data preclude an examination of whether a trade-off exists between publishing and patenting, holding individual characteristics constant over time. But the strong cross-sectional correlation that we find does not suggest that commercialization has come at the expense of placing knowledge in the public domain.
This paper studies an unusually comprehensive data-set of the universe of research groups that applied to an Italian 1989 93 research programme in biotechnology and bio-instrumentation. We develop a model to test whether past publications influence the expected grants obtained by the units in this programme, and hence their publication output. We find that this effect is important, and suggest that institutional features of resource allocation in public research may have serious implications for long term divergence in research performance. We also find that to maximise the total expected publications of the programme about 85% of its budget should be allocated to the top quartile of the selected units (about 10% of applicants) ranked according to past publications. Our estimated elasticity of publications on budget is 0.6, and we find evidence of a trade-off between publications and "industrial transferability": all else held constant, projects conducted with industrial applications in mind produce about 20% fewer publications.
The relationship between age and the publishing productivity of Ph.D. scientists is analyzed using data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients (National Research Council) and the Science Citation Index. The longitudinal nature of the data allows for the identification of pure aging effects. In five of the six areas studied, life-cycle aging effects are present. Only in particle physics, where scientists often speak of being on a "religious quest," is the indication that scientific productivity is not investment-motivated. Vintage effects are also considered. The expectation that the latest educated are the most productive is not generally supported by the data. Copyright 1991 by American Economic Association.
The existence of geographically mediated "spillovers" from university research to commercial innovation is explored using state-level time-series data on corporate patents, corporate R&D, and university research. A significant effect of university research on corporate patents is found, particularly in the areas of drugs and medical technology, and electronics, optics, and nuclear technology. In addition, university research appears to have an indirect effect on local innovation by inducing industrial R&D spending. Copyright 1989 by American Economic Association.
Despite criticism of the Norwegian implementation of research priority areas as symbolic of a trend towards more external control of academic research, a survey of researchers revealed that they were very supportive of the scheme. It provides them with additional resources, they do not have to change the direction of their research, and they are able to collaborate with other scientists in their own and other disciplines. This form of mild steering, by the distribution of extra resources without any strong demands for adaptation, seems to be effective.
Some aspects of the econometric identification and estimation of production functions are discussed focusing on the issue of simultaneity and reviewing the response to it since Douglas's early studies and Marschak and Andrews critique of them. We look primarily at the work that uses micro data for panels of firms and plants in the framework of fixed effects models and at some more recent extensions of it. We find that researchers, in trying to evade the simultaneity problem, have shifted to the use of thinner and thinner slices of data, exacerbating thereby other problems and misspecifications. We conclude on the need for better data, especially on product prices at the individual observation level and on relevant cost and demand shifters, and for better behavioral theories which would encompass the large amount of heterogeneity observed at the micro level.
What went wrong and how can America become second to none in industrial productivity? This long awaited study by a team of top notch MIT scientists and economists - the MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity - takes a hard look at the recurring weaknesses of American industry that are threatening the country's standard of living and its position in the world economy. Made in America identifies what is best and worth replicating in American industrial practice and sets out five national priorities for regaining the productive edge.Unlike other studies that prescribe macroeconomic cures, Made in America focuses on the reorganization and effective integration of human resources and new technologies within the firm as a principal driving force for long term growth in productivity.Made in America examines the relationship between human resources and technological change in detail and singles out the most significant productivity weaknesses from the myriad causes that are typically cited. These include shortA-time horizons and a preoccupation with the bottom line, outdated strategies that focus excessively on the domestic market, lack of cooperation within and among U.S. firms, neglect of human resources, technological failures in translating discoveries to products, and a mismatch between governmental actions and the needs of industry. Looking ahead Made in America asserts that industrial performance would improve substantially simply by building on what is best in U.S. industry. It describes representative systems of production that can serve as models of best industrial practice for niche producers, price competitive specialized producers, and flexible mass producers.Among the goals singled out as national priorities are the creation of a new economic citizenship that involves wellA-educated workers as active partners in the reproduction process, a new strategic focus on production, finding a better balance between cooperation and individualism, learning to live in an increasingly international economy, and making proper provision for the future both in terms of capital and human resources.The findings and goals of Made in America are based on such measures of productivity performance as product quality, innovativeness, time to market, and service in eight manufacturing sectors - semiconductors, computers, and office equipment; automobiles; steel; consumer electronics, chemicals and pharmaceuticals; textiles; machine tools; and commercial aircraft. These measures revealed a large gap between the best and average U.S. practice.Michael L. Dertouzos. is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Director of MIT's Laboratory of Computer Science. Robert M. Solow is Institute Professor of Economics, and Richard K. Lester is Associate Professor of Nuclear Engineering,
This paper studies an unusually rich data set of all the 1473 applications to the NSF in economics during 1985-1990. This dataset is unusual in that one can observe the characteristics of the scientists whose application was accepted (414 applications in our sample) as well as of those whose applications were rejected. We estimate the effect of an NSF grants on the research output (quality-adjusted publications) of individual researchers. Estimates indicate that NSF funding has only a modest effect on scientific publication output, with the possible exception of junior scholars. We also analyse some related issues, such as the factors that affect the NSF selection process and the decision about the size of the grants.
"Kenney's work is the first major effort to provide a detailed analysis of the birth of the new industrial field of biotechnology and its impact on universities...Kenney's book abounds in rich description and valuable conjectures. It also provides important insights into the structural and institutional aspects of the biotechnological revolution. It is informed by an extensive literature including reports from the financial community, university-industry contracts, trade journals, personal interviews, and company prospectuses."-Sheldon Krimsky, American Scientist "Probably never before has the emergence of a technology-based new industry been so exhaustive covered-while still in its gestation period...An excellent and very readable review."-S. Allen Heininger, Chemical and Engineering News "The author raises important questions about whether the character of this university-industrial complex adequately allows for the kind of public discussion and participation necessary to insure consideration of social, economic, and moral issues in the development of this important new technology."-Harvard Educational Review "A fine description of a vital new field. It deserves wide readership."-David Silbert & Duncan Neuhauser, Ph.D., New England Journal of Medicine
There has been no systematic study of the characteristics of the universities and academic researchers that seem to have contributed most to industrial innovation. Nor do we know how such academic research has been funded. This paper, based on data obtained from 66 firms in seven major manufacturing industries and from over 200 academic researchers, sheds new light on the sources, characteristics, and financing of academic research underlying industrial innovation. The findings should be of interest to economists concerned with technological change and to policy makers attempting to increase the economic payoff from the nation's academic research.
The recent increase in patenting by university researchers has concerned observers asking if increased patenting is associated with less open publication of research results by university researchers. Access to university-based research knowledge is critical to innovation in many areas of industry. As university researchers increasingly patent their research results, the availability of these results to follow-on innovators may be aected. Patenting may increase dissemination of knowledge through public disclosure. However, many researchers have expressed concern that the increased focus on patenting and commercialization is compromising the historically open nature of university research or that university research in patentable areas is crowding out research in more basic science. Only limited empirical evidence exists regarding the relationship between patenting and publishing by university researchers. Our study adds to this limited evidence with an empirical investigation based on a panel data set for a very broad sample of university researchers. Results indicate that publication production by university researchers does not decrease with patent inventorship, and in fact increases significantly. Analysis of the average number of citations to a researcher's publications by future publications indicates that papers published in the year of a patent application are cited more heavily, but this relationship is not robust to controlling for the count of that year's publications by the researcher, suggesting that the positive relationship is related to quality of research rather than patenting itself. Further research on citations to patent-related publication is needed to explore these results.
Restricted research budgets, expanding claims for resources, and steeply escalating costs have increased the demand for methods that establish or predict the efficiency or productivity of expenditures on basic research. Irvine and Martin (I-M) have recently advocated head-to-head efficiency comparisons of research performers using publications and citations. This paper (1) criticizes the I-M approach from the perspective of economics and policy analysis; (2) illustrates the natural production function extension of the I-M approach; (3) demonstrates, by worked out examples, the feasibility of such an extension along with its pitfalls; and (4) argues that combined econometric-bibliometric modeling can be used to improve research allocations with only modest increases in agency “transaction” costs. The paper presents a prototype efficiency analysis using recent NSF data for the behavioral and neural sciences.
Australian science and technology academics see advantages in closer research links with industry but at the same time are aware of potential dangers. Academics in these areas with industry research funding tend to be older and more senior than those without such funding, and a higher proportion of them hold national competitive grants. These industry-funded academics tend to spend longer hours at work and more time on postgraduate teaching, administration, committee work and interaction with colleagues. They also have better publication records.
Despite equivalent success rates, the probability of obtaining an NSF grant is substantially higher for chemists than for economists. The evidence indicates that NSF funds are more scarce for economists and that the quality of funded proposals as measured by institutional affiliation is greater for economists than for chemists. Administrators should be aware that when the supply of funds varies among disciplines, the probability of being funded and the expected value of an award will also vary among departments.
Science policy issues have recently joined technology issues in being acknowledged to have strategic importance for national ‘competitiveness’ and ‘economic security’. The economics literature addressed specifically to science and its interdependences with technological progress has been quite narrowly focused and has lacked an overarching conceptual framework to guide empirical studies and public policy discussions in this area. The emerging ‘new economics of science’, described by this paper, offers a way to remedy these deficiencies. It makes use of insights from the theory of games of incomplete information to synthesize the classic approach of Arrow and Nelson in examining the implications of the characteristics of information for allocative efficiency in research activities, on the one hand, with the functionalist analysis of institutional structures, reward systems and behavioral norms of ‘open science’ communities-associated with the sociology of science in the tradition of Merton-on the other.
Although many scholars suggest that IPR has a positive effect on cumulative innovation, a growing “anti-commons” perspective highlights the negative role of IPR over scientific knowledge. At its core, this debate is centered on how intellectual property rights over a given piece of knowledge affect the propensity of future researchers to build upon that knowledge in their own scientific research activities. This article frames this issue around the concept of dual knowledge, in which a single discovery may contribute to both scientific research and useful commercial applications, and finds evidence for a modest anti-commons effect. A key implication of dual knowledge is that it may be simultaneously instantiated as a scientific research article and as a patent. Such patent-paper pairs are at the heart of our empirical strategy. We exploit the fact that patents are granted with a substantial lag, often many years after the knowledge is initially disclosed through paper publication. The knowledge associated with a patent-paper pair therefore diffuses within two distinct intellectual property environments, one associated with the pre-grant period and another after formal IP rights are granted. Relative to the expected citation pattern for publications with a given quality level, the anti-commons perspective suggests that the citation rate for a scientific publication should fall after formal IP rights associated with that publication are granted. Employing a differences-in-differences estimator for 169 patent-paper pairs (and including a control group of other publications from the same journal for which no patent is granted), we find evidence for a modest anti-commons effect (the citation rate after the patent grant declines by approximately 10 to 20 percent). This decline becomes more pronounced with the number of years elapsed since the date of the patent grant and is particularly salient for articles authored by researchers with public sector affiliations.
Individuals involved in basic research, like other workers, respond to incentives. Funding agencies provide implicit incentives when they specify the rules by which awards are made. The following analysis is an exercise in understanding incentives at an applied level. Specific rules are examined. What is the effect of rewarding past effort? What happens when a few large awards are replaced by many small awards? How does the timing of an award affect effort? How does an agency choose which topics to fund? Socially optimal rules are derived. Copyright 1997 by University of Chicago Press.
This article analyzes the behavior of a single firm that is engaged in R&D for a "sponsor." We show that contractual forms that provide good incentives in a static environment may introduce incentive problems in a dynamic setting. More specifically, we show that a firm engaged in a sequence of R&D contracts is more likely to do research: (1) the lower are the costs of R&D, (2) the better is the state of sponsor knowledge, and (3) the longer is the sequence of contracts (given an appropriately high discount factor). We also show that the firm reveals a larger share of its results: (1) the better is the state of sponsor knowledge, (2) the better is the state of private knowledge possessed by the firm, and (3) the shorter is the sequence of contracts.
Despite growing acceptance of relationships between academia and industry in the life sciences, systematic, up-to-date information about their extent and the consequences for the parties involved remains scarce. We attempted to collect information about the prevalence, magnitude, commercial benefits, and potential risks of such relationships by surveying a representative sample of life-science companies in the United States to determine their relationships with academic institutions.
We collected data by telephone from May through September 1994 from senior executives of 210 life-science companies (of 306 companies surveyed; response rate, 69 percent). The sample contained all Fortune 500 companies in the fields of agriculture, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals; all international pharmaceutical companies with sales volumes similar to those of the Fortune 500 companies; and a random sample of non-Fortune 500 companies in the life sciences drawn from multiple commercial and noncommercial directories. Both the survey instrument and the survey methods resembled those of our 1984 study of 106 biotechnology companies, allowing us to assess the evolution of relationships between academia and industry over the past decade.
Ninety percent of companies conducting life-science research in the United States had relationships involving the life sciences with an academic institution in 1994. Fifty-nine percent supported research in such institutions, providing an estimated $1.5 billion, or approximately 11.7 percent of all research-and-development funding received that year. The agreements with universities tended to be short-term and to involve small amounts, implying that most such relationships supported applied research or development. Over 60 percent of companies providing support for life-science research in universities had received patents, products, and sales as a result of those relationships. At the same time, the companies reported that their relationships with universities often included agreements to keep the results of research secret beyond the time needed to file a patent. From 1984 to 1994, the involvement of industry with academic institutions has increased, but the characteristics of the relationships have remained remarkably stable.
After more than a decade of sustained interaction, universities and industries seem to have formed durable partnerships in the life sciences, although the relationships may pose greater threats to the openness of scientific communication than universities generally acknowledge. However, industrial support for university research is much smaller in amount than federal support, and companies are unlikely to be able to compensate for sizable federal cutbacks.
Examines the way that scientific commons areused in today’s society, and postulatesthat open science is in danger ofbeing forgotten or denied.The theory proposed by many philosophers andsociologists is grounded in the idea that scientists should be motivated by thesearch for understanding, and any practical benefits that arise from theirresearch are unpredictable and should not be the driver for determining whatresearch to conduct. While this theory is correct in its belief that good science focuses on openscience, it is no longer realistic to believe that the practical benefits thatmight arise from research are not the focus of many of those conducting theresearch.In evaluating the role of science today, an understanding of thelink between it and technology must be reached. Argues that the ability to patent such scientific facts or principles asgenes or gene codes will serve to hinder open science, as these findings serveas building blocks to future research and should not be restricted.One ofthe key groups involved in the future of open science is universities.Inrecent years, there has been a shift toward the patenting of universityresearch.While this patenting may be beneficial in some respects, thoseuniversities that limit the availability of a development with a potentiallywide use serve to hinder rather than advance open science.(SRD)
The information-based theoretical model for public support of basic research, developed in the USA at the end of the 1950s, has held up well in political practice, in spite of its neglect of training benefits, of necessary prior investment in research infrastructure and of its consequently limited relevance outside the USA. At the same time, US practice in basic research has often been misinterpreted as being driven by short-term usefulness, whereas its key features are massive and pluralistic government funding, high academic quality, and the ability to invest in the long-term development of new (often multidisciplinary) fields. Challenges for the future include greater (and often ill-judged) pressures from governments for demonstrable usefulness of the basic research it supports, the entirely separate development of direct links to application in biomedical and software fields, and more complicated links between national basic research and application resulting from the changes in the internationalization of corporate R&D. And perhaps we can learn as much from successful practices in Scandinavia and Switzerland as from the USA. Copyright 2001 by Oxford University Press.
This paper evaluates the relationship between wages and the scientific orientation of R&D organizations. Science-oriented firms allow researchers to publish in the scientific literature and pursue individual research agendas. Adoption of a Science- oriented research approach (i.e., Science) is driven by two distinct forces: a (a Preference effect) and R&D productivity gains arising from earlier access to discoveries (a Productivity effect). The equilibrium relationship between wages and Science reflects the relative salience of these effects: the Preference effect contributes to a negative compensating differential while the Productivity effect raises the possibility of rent-sharing between firms and researchers. In addition, because the value of participating in Science is increasing in the prestige of researchers, Science tends to be adopted by those firms who employ higher-quality researchers. This structural relationship between the adoption of Science and unobserved heterogeneity in researcher ability leads to bias in the context of hedonic wage and productivity regressions which do not account for such effects. This paper exploits a novel field-based empirical approach to substantially overcome this bias. Specifically, prior to accepting a specific job offer, many scientists receive multiple job offers, making it possible to calculate the wage- Science curve for individual scientists, controlling for ability level. The methodology is applied to a sample of postdoctoral biologists. The results suggest a strong negative relationship between wages and Science. For example, firms who allow their employees to publish extract, on average, a 25% wage discount. The results are robust to restricting the sample to non-academic job offers, but the findings depend critically on the inclusion of the researcher fixed effects. The paper's conclusion, then, is that, conditional on scientific ability, scientists do indeed pay to be scientists.
The growth of young, technology-based firms has received considerable attention in the literature given their importance for the generation and creation of economic wealth. Taking a strategic management perspective, we link the entrepreneurial strategy deployed by young, technology-based firms with firm growth. In line with recent research, we consider both revenue and employment growth as they reflect different underlying value creation processes. Using a unique European dataset of research-based spin-offs, we find that firms emphasizing a product and hybrid strategy are positively associated with growth in revenues. The latter strategy also has a positive influence on the creation of additional employment. Contrary to expectation, however, we find that firms pursuing a technology strategy do not grow fast in employment. Our study sheds new light on the relationship between entrepreneurial strategy and firm growth in revenues and employment.
Based on longitudinal data for a matched sample of 592 Italian academic inventors and controls, the paper explores the impact of patenting on university professors’ scientific productivity, as measured by publication and citation counts. Academic inventors (university professors who appear as designated inventors on at least one patent application) publish more and better quality papers than their colleagues with no patents, and increase their productivity after patenting. Endogeneity problems are addressed using instrumental variables and applying inverse probability of treatment weights. The beneficial effect of patenting on publication rates last longer for academic inventors with more than one patent.
Examines the growth and development of the biotechnology industry, looking at the effects of individual scientists, universities, and federal research support. Specific focus is on the development of the underlying science in biotechnology and the location of those individuals involved in the development of this science. Data used in this analysis were collected from 751 firms that existed in 183 economic regions of the United States for a fourteen year period (1976-1989). A set of 327 star scientists were also identified. These scientists accounted for approximately 17.3% of published articles in this field as of early 1990. The data is analyzed both over the long-run and on an annual basis. Results using the long-run model show that location of the development of the biotechnology industry in the 1980's was strongly influenced by intellectual human capital variables. Star scientists that play an important role in the process of spillover and geographic agglomeration are able to be identified. Results of the annual model also show support for the strong role that intellectual human capital played in determining the direction of the biotechnology industry. Basic scientific research is shown to be extremely valuable in this industry. Although there was a tendency for intellectual human capital to thrive around universities, the stronger determinant of industry location was the positioning of scientists with high research productivity. (SRD)
