10 research outputs found
How Principal Investigatorsâ Commercial Experience Influences Technology Transfer and Market Impacts
Businesses can benefit from universityâindustry collaborations, yet they rarely take full advantage of them. Scientists who serve as principal investigators (PIs) act as the nucleus of universityâindustry collaborations and partner with industry to cocreate value. We conducted a case study of PIs at publicly funded research universities, institutes, and organizations in Ireland to explore how having commercial experience influences how PIs approach technology transfer and how they develop new business models, products, and services. We learned that PIsâ prior commercial experience influences how they approach their research, project work, and project selection and affects how they commercialize knowledge and outputs from their scientific researchââthat is, patents, licences, agreements, etc.ââthroughout the projectâs life cycle. In universityâ industry collaborations, PIsâ commercial experience can impact industry partnersâ attempts to realize technology transfer and market impacts
The Evaluation of Innovation Within a Faculty of Arts and Humanities
It seems that innovation in the Faculties of Arts and Humanities has seldom been investigated. This research aims to evaluate innovation in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities (FAH) of the Autonomous University of Madrid (AUM). Surprisingly, of the different faculties of AUM, the FAH is the one with a better ratio of publications per researcher and with more teaching innovation projects. In addition to analyzing these statistics, a survey was sent to 544 researchers, of which 205 answered. Most researchers try to be innovative, because 62.2% take time to think of innovative ideas every week. And they seem innovative because 59.7% indicate that, in the last three years, they have generated at least one idea that is innovative at an international level. The fact that more than 40% of the participants do not achieve ideas that are globally pioneering reflects how difficult it is to do so
A typology of principal investigators based on their human capital: an exploratory analysis
There is burgeoning literature on principal investigators (PIs) and their influential role in
science, technology transfer and research commercialisation. However, there is yet no analysis
of this actor from the perspective of their human capital (HC), i.e., the combination of
knowledge, abilities and skills that they possess. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is
to fill this gap by identifying whether a range of different PI profiles exists, based on their
different HC. A cluster analysis was developed using a database comprised of 224 PIs of
research teams, from a wide range of scientific fields. Three different PI profiles were identified,
research-oriented PIs, accomplished PIs, management-focused PIs. The relationship
between each of these profiles and their performance was analysed at both individual and
research team level, and our findings reinforce the idea that there is not a size that fits all.
Indeed, contrary to the âmore is betterâ statement, higher levels of HC are not necessarily
connected to better results, our findings suggested an adequate combination of HC as the
best option for PIs. Results of the relationship between PI gender, performance and the
three different PI profiles have been examined, as well
A lexical and syntactic study of research article titles in Library Science and Scientometrics
Title of a research article is an abstract of the abstract. Titles play a decisive role in convincing readers at first sight whether articles are worth reading or not. Not only do research article titles show how carefully words are chosen by authors, but also reflect disciplinary differences in terms of title words and structure between hard sciences and soft sciences. This study examined the lexical density and syntactic structure of 690 research article titles chosen from five Library Science and Scientometrics journals, aiming to reveal disciplinary differences. The result suggested both Library Science and Scientometrics have almost the same title length and the prevalent usage of Nominal Phrase (NP) to govern the title structure. The result also stated some disciplinary differences: Library Science demonstrates more punctuation complexity, particularly a greater frequency in using colons; but Scientometrics shows more involvement of words related to research methods, which is an indicator to papersâ scientific value, and more usage of declarative Full Sentence (FS) structure, which were mostly discovered in the research articles in hard sciences
Domestic researchers with longer careers generate higher average citation impact but it does not increase over time
© The Authors. Published by MIT Press. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence.
The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisherâs website: https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00132Information about the relative strengths of scholars is needed for the efficient running of
knowledge systems. Since academic research requires many skills, more experienced
researchers might produce better research and attract more citations. This article assesses
career citation impact changes 2001-2016 for domestic researchers (definition: first and last
Scopus journal article in the same country) from the twelve nations with most Scopus
documents. Careers are analysed longitudinally, so that changes are not due to personnel
evolution, such as researchers leaving or entering a country. The results show that long term
domestic researchers do not tend to improve their citation impact over time but tend to
achieve their average citation impact by their first or second Scopus journal article. In some
countries, this citation impact subsequently declines. These longer-term domestic
researchers have higher citation impact than the national average in all countries, however,
whereas scholars publishing only one journal article have substantially lower citation impact
in all countries. The results are consistent with an efficiently functioning researcher selection
system but cast slight doubt on the long-term citation impact potential of long-term domestic
researchers. Research and funding policies may need to accommodate these patterns when
citation impact is a relevant indicator
Scientists in the principal investigator role
The social and economic contributions of R&D are essential in the development of countries, since they are the motor for their progress. Research can be implemented by companies, but it can also be implemented in universities and research centres. The research process is more and more often conducted in teams and these are increasingly multidisciplinary. This is a double-edge sword because, even though diversity among research team members could increase the generation of innovative and creative ideas, this heterogeneity can also have a dark side for the welfare of the research team. Therefore, when both advantages and disadvantages can emerge in a diverse research team, what can diminish the weaknesses and enhance the strengths is the crucial role of an efficient principal investigator managing and leading the research team.
Notwithstanding that there are some studies that have focused on the principal investigator role in the literature, the knowledge about them is somewhat scant, because there is still a need for a deeper understanding of this crucial actor in R&D environments. The research work carried out in this Doctoral Thesis aims to address both principal investigators and their environments. With this research, we will deepen the understanding of what influences principal investigators and what they have an influence on, since principal investigators are a key asset in R&D environments. Therefore, the focus of this Doctoral Thesis is on some of the issues that are in the core of the influence of principal investigators on the activities of R&D teams. Particularly, we focus our research efforts on developing a measurement scale of the principal investigator's human capital whose results could allow us to determine whether different principal investigator profiles exist. We also focus on studying whether obtaining public competitive funding could be influenced by the principal investigator's priorities or their gender. Moreover, we focus on the relationship between the level of conflict within a research team and its performance, as well as on the influence that the principal investigator's transformational leadership has on this relationship
How university-based principal investigators shape a hybrid role identity
This paper examines the role identity of university based principal investigators (PIs), as well as the learning mechanisms that underpin this position. PIs have become the focus of increasing research attention which has argued that they, along with universities and funding bodies, form an increasingly crucial tripartite in public research environments. Although the PI position is well recognised among scientific peers and research institutions, a role identity is still emerging and remains ill-defined. This issue requires research attention as having a clear role identity is fundamental to performing a role effectively. Our analysis draws on interviews with 41 health science PIs in New Zealand to develop a PI role identity learning framework. We find that the PI role identity is made up of four roles â science networker, research contractor, project manager, and entrepreneur - that are mutually reinforcing throughout the research process, and which together form a hybrid science-business role identity. Furthermore, we identify two learning mechanisms â learning through experience and violation â and show how these are formative for role identity when transitioning to an ill-defined position. Based on our findings we discuss a number of practical implications for PIs, universities and funding bodies
Is science driven by principal investigators?
<p>Datasets accompanying the paper "Is science driven by principal investigators?" submitted to Scientometrics. Data are published in Pajek format.</p