Study on open science: The general state of the play in Open Science principles and practices at European life sciences institutes

Nowadays, open science is a hot topic on all levels and also is one of the priorities of the European Research Area. Components that are commonly associated with open science are open access, open data, open methodology, open source, open peer review, open science policies and citizen science. Open science may a great potential to connect and influence the practices of researchers, funding institutions and the public. In this paper, we evaluate the level of openness based on public surveys at four European life sciences institute

Igniting technological modernization through science towns and technology parks: the case of Russia

Since the turn of the 21st century, the Russian state has attempted to address the country’s excessive dependence on natural resources. It has implemented an ambitious programme of economic modernization, including giving innovation more policy prominence and boosting state funding for research and development (R&D) and innovation. The programme includes a plethora of new initiatives, including innovation strategy documents, R&D funding for institutions, and state support for innovation infrastructure (e.g. clusters, science towns, and science and technology parks). However, despite investing substantial resources in science and technology since 2000 in a variety of forms and with an impressive legacy of scientific R&D from the Soviet period, Russia is still faring comparatively poorly in innovation outcomes, such as the number of innovative enterprises and international patent registrations. This thesis attempts to understand why Russia is performing comparatively poorly in innovation outcomes. It takes a multidisciplinary approach to examine why Russia is not doing as well in economic catch up and innovation as, for example, China. Following Taylor’s (2016) emphasis on the political economy of science, technology, and innovation policies, it suggests that a country’s political economy model is an important driver of innovation performance. The thesis finds that Russia has implemented a wide range of approaches to accelerate growth based on innovation and knowledge and provides new empirical material on Russia’s science towns and technology parks. Yet for all the good intentions and effort, Russia’s larger political economy model, as analysed here, has substantially hindered its rate of innovation and diffusion into commercial enterprises. The challenge of technological modernization is a matter of public concern and a problem to be solved by a diverse range of institutions and societal actors. Accordingly, technological modernization is enlightened by several conceptual perspectives. The five most helpful perspectives used in this thesis are certain modernization theories; rent-seeking (who benefits from modernization processes); neo-Schumpeterian and co-evolutionary growth approaches; innovation systems and innovation policies; and finally, sistema (Ledeneva, 2013), a political economic approach that explains key aspects of Russia’s current authoritarian system

Congress UPV Proceedings of the 21ST International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators

This is the book of proceedings of the 21st Science and Technology Indicators Conference that took place in València (Spain) from 14th to 16th of September 2016. The conference theme for this year, ‘Peripheries, frontiers and beyond’ aimed to study the development and use of Science, Technology and Innovation indicators in spaces that have not been the focus of current indicator development, for example, in the Global South, or the Social Sciences and Humanities. The exploration to the margins and beyond proposed by the theme has brought to the STI Conference an interesting array of new contributors from a variety of fields and geographies. This year’s conference had a record 382 registered participants from 40 different countries, including 23 European, 9 American, 4 Asia-Pacific, 4 Africa and Near East. About 26% of participants came from outside of Europe. There were also many participants (17%) from organisations outside academia including governments (8%), businesses (5%), foundations (2%) and international organisations (2%). This is particularly important in a field that is practice-oriented. The chapters of the proceedings attest to the breadth of issues discussed. Infrastructure, benchmarking and use of innovation indicators, societal impact and mission oriented-research, mobility and careers, social sciences and the humanities, participation and culture, gender, and altmetrics, among others. We hope that the diversity of this Conference has fostered productive dialogues and synergistic ideas and made a contribution, small as it may be, to the development and use of indicators that, being more inclusive, will foster a more inclusive and fair world

International cases on innovation, knowledge and technology transfer

The subject matter, currently still extremely topical, refers to cooperation between academic centres and the business sector whose aims are to transfer knowledge and technologies to the market. The validity of this theme arises from the dynamic advancement of the global economy. This process has forced companies operating in both the market and in the public sector to notice the increasing role of such transfer in fostering academic entrepreneurship and accelerating the commercialisation of a number of indispensable innovations which determine the socio-economic development of both the state and its individual regions. The work consists of 17 articles (based on case studies) written by 28 authors. It has a logical and clear composition, which makes it reader friendly and facilitates easy comprehension of the issues presented. The layout of the work has been divided into four closely corresponding parts.Preparation and printing funded by the National Agency for Research and Development under project “Kreator innowacyjności – wparcie dla przedsiębiorczości akademickiej”

Viability of patent insurance in Spain

M-24609-2013Since 1975 the FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE has involved itself in activities serving the general interests of society in different areas of business and culture along with activities aimed at improving the economic and social conditions of the least advantaged members and sectors of society. Within this framework, the FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE’s Institute of Insurance Science promotes and undertakes educational and research activities in the fields of insurance and risk management. In the area of education, its activities include specialized, post-graduate academic training carried out in association with the Pontifical University of Salamanca and courses and seminars for professionals held in Spain and Latin America. These activities have been expanded into other geographic regions thanks to cooperation with a series of institutions in Spain and other countries and an Internet training programme. The Institute offers grants for research in risk and insurance science and operates a specialized insurance and risk management Documentation Centre as support for its activities. The Institute routinely sponsors and draws up reports and publishes books dealing with insurance and risk management to improve our understanding of these fields. Some are intended as reference materials for those starting out in the study or practice of insurance affairs, while others are intended as information sources for undertaking research into specialized issues in greater depth. One of these activities is the publication of this volume, the outcome of research carried out by Drs. Pérez Carrillo and Cuypers in 2011 and 2012, under the guidance of José Antonio Aventín Arroyo

Knowledge and Management Models for Sustainable Growth

In the last years sustainability has become a topic of global concern and a key issue in the strategic agenda of both business organizations and public authorities and organisations. Significant changes in business landscape, the emergence of new technology, including social media, the pressure of new social concerns, have called into question established conceptualizations of competitiveness, wealth creation and growth. New and unaddressed set of issues regarding how private and public organisations manage and invest their resources to create sustainable value have brought to light. In particular the increasing focus on environmental and social themes has suggested new dimensions to be taken into account in the value creation dynamics, both at organisations and communities level. For companies the need of integrating corporate social and environmental responsibility issues into strategy and daily business operations, pose profound challenges, which, in turn, involve numerous processes and complex decisions influenced by many stakeholders. Facing these challenges calls for the creation, use and exploitation of new knowledge as well as the development of proper management models, approaches and tools aimed to contribute to the development and realization of environmentally and socially sustainable business strategies and practices

Negotiating Sustainable Development: an Analysis of the Bargains Between the State and Mining Multinational Enterprises in the Chilean Copper Mining Global Production Network

The latest processes of globalisation have brought major changes in the world’s social fabric. Today, places are connected by an intricate web of relations and flows, determining their development possibilities. The natural resource rich countries and regions have been plugged into these global production networks, but despite their natural wealth, they have not successfully reached a sustainable development path. Orthodox economic theories have assuming positive externalities from FDI flows fail to capture this outcome. However, recent developments in the Economic Geography literature provide an analysis of uneven development in the guise of the Global Production Networks approach. This literature acknowledges the decisive role of power in producing a strategic coupling between the host region/country interests and the extractive multinational enterprises, something crucial in the extractive industries. This research focuses on the mining industry, as a way to advancing a better understanding of the relationship between the extractive industry and sustainable development of host regions. For this, it uses the Chilean copper mining as a case study. Hence, this research tries to contribute to the general question of how the mining industry affects uneven regional and national development in the context of the latest globalisation process by: first, incorporating the GPN in analysing the extractives industries; second, unpacking the concept of bargaining power, to explain issues related to value capture; third, providing empirical evidence about the successive bargains taking place between the mining MNEs and Chilean State in different nodes, and their implications for sustainable development; and fourthly, establishing the role of the State in the successive bargains taking place with the mining MNEs in the current Chilean copper mining GPN

“Scholarly Communications at Duke” Blog, December 2006-April 2016

This work contains all of the blog posts spanning the years 2006-2016 from the "Scholarly Communications @ Duke" blog by Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S, J.D. It is being made available in both PDF and XML formats to facilitate use of the material.The "Scholarly Communications at Duke" blog addressed current issues in scholarly communications, and also tried to provide information, from the most basic to complex issues, about how copyright law impacted higher education as it moved more fully into a digital age