A resource-based view on the interactions of university researchers

The high value of collaboration among scientists and of interactions of university researchers with industry is generally acknowledged. In this study we explain the use of different knowledge networks at the individual level from a resource-based perspective. This involves viewing networks as a resource that offers competitive advantages to an individual university researcher in terms of career development. Our results show that networking and career development are strongly related, but it is important to distinguish between different types of networks. Although networks on various levels (faculty, university, scientific, industrial) show strong correlations, we found three significant differences. First, networking within one’s own faculty and with researchers from other universities stimulates careers, while interactions with industry do not. Second, during the course of an academic career a researcher’s scientific network activity first rises, but then declines after about 20 years. Science-industry collaboration, however, continuously increases. Third, the personality trait ‘global innovativeness’ positively influences science-science interactions, but not science-industry interactions.research collaboration, science-industry interaction, individual researcher, resource-based view

When does centrality matter? Scientific productivity and the moderating role of research specialization and cross-community ties

The present study addresses the ongoing debate concerning academic scientific productivity. Specifically, given the increasing number of collaborations in academia and the crucial role networks play in knowledge creation, we investigate the extent to which building social capital within the academic community represents a valuable resource for a scientist's knowledge-creation process. We measure the social capital in terms of structural position within the academic collaborative network. Furthermore, we analyse the extent to which an academic scientist's research specialization and ties that cross-community boundaries act as moderators of the aforementioned relationship. Empirical results derived from an analysis of an Italian academic community from 2001 to 2008 suggest academic scientists that build social capital by occupying central positions in the community outperform their more isolated colleagues. However, scientific productivity declines beyond a certain threshold value of centrality, hence revealing the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship. This relationship is negatively moderated by the extent to which an academic focuses research activities in few scientific knowledge domains, whereas it is positively moderated by the number of cross-community ties established

How productive are academic researchers in agriculture-related sciences? The Mexican case

This paper explores the effect of commercial farmers-academic researchers linkages on research productivity in fields related to agriculture. Using original data and econometric analysis, our findings show a positive and significant relationship between intensive linkages with a small number of commercial farmers and research productivity, when this is defined as publications in ISI journals. This evidence seems contrary to other contributions that argue that strong ties with the business sector reduce research productivity and distort the original purposes of university, i.e., conducting basic research and preparing highly-trained professionals. When research productivity is defined more broadly adding other types of research outputs, the relationship is also positive and significant confirming the argument that close ties between public research institutions and businesses foster the emergence of new ideas that can be translated into innovations with commercial and/or social value. Another important finding is that researchers in public institutions produce several types of research outputs; therefore, measuring research productivity only by published ISI papers misses important dimensions of research activities.agriculture sector, research productivity, university-business sector interaction, university-industry collaboration

A review of the characteristics of 108 author-level bibliometric indicators

An increasing demand for bibliometric assessment of individuals has led to a growth of new bibliometric indicators as well as new variants or combinations of established ones. The aim of this review is to contribute with objective facts about the usefulness of bibliometric indicators of the effects of publication activity at the individual level. This paper reviews 108 indicators that can potentially be used to measure performance on the individual author level, and examines the complexity of their calculations in relation to what they are supposed to reflect and ease of end-user application.Comment: to be published in Scientometrics, 201

Developmental Pedagogy in Marriage and Family Therapy Education

New practice domains are opening up for practitioners of family therapy in the medical, organizational, and human relations fields. In this new environment, family therapy educators and supervisors are required to cross the epistemological spaces of scientist-practitioner, postmodernism, and critical theory. These new possibilities require that family therapist educators become comfortable moving between multiple epistemologies. This poses increasing challenges that will require a hybridization of knowledge and practice approaches in MFT education. Through focus groups consisting of 34 participants, all of who were in their first quarter of a Master’s degree program in Marriage and Family Therapy. We found a rich set of themes that reflect the experiences of students in their first quarter of learning multiple, potentially contradictory theories. The data that emerged reflect both the deep and varied student experiences that took place as they were introduced to multiple perspectives in their first quarter, as well as student desires that they would have liked to have had met during their experience. The results in each of these areas uniquely inform potential future MFT pedagogical practices

Knowledge Transfer in the Mirror: Reflections on the Determinants of Research Groups and Companies Collaborative Patterns within Andalusia's Regional Innovation System

Knowledge transfer is a crucial aspect for the new paradigm of science-industry cooperation. The new role of universities and the relevance of external knowledge to firm's competitiveness brought a huge attention to this process both in analytical and decision-making terms. Commonly, formal mechanisms as intellectual property rights licensing, research contracts and spinning-off are the focus of the policy interventions and studies but the role of informality is being underlined by several recent research results. This article explores the crucial factors that induce science and industry collaborations in Andalusia, a catching-up region in Spanish and European context. The study uses limited dependent and count data regression analysis based in a survey applied in parallel to research groups and firms. The estimated regressions create a mirror image between these two institutional spheres stressing aspects that are more relevant in each reality to stimulate the existence, number, diversity and informality of knowledge transfer. The results give relevant insights for policies to stimulate knowledge transfer in technology moderate intensive South European regions.

Scientific and Technological Regimes in Nanotechnology: Combinatorial Inventors and Performance

Academics and policy makers are questioning about the relation between science and technology in the emerging field of nano science and technology (NST) and the effectiveness of different institutional regimes. We analyze the performance of inventors in the NST using multiple indicators. We clustered patents in three groups according to the scientific curricula of the inventors. The first two groups are composed by patents whose inventors respectively are all authors of at least one scientific publication in the NST and none of then has obtained a scientific publication in that field. Thirdly, we isolated those patents that have at least one inventor, who is also author of at least one scientific publication in the NST. The underlining presumption of this classification is that of a proxy of different institutional search regimes of the inventive activity; pure academic research, pure industrial R&D, and academic-industrial research partnerships.Science-Technology Relation, Emerging Field, Nanotechnology, Patent Quality, Inventive Productivity.

Mapping the Evolution of "Clusters": A Meta-analysis

This paper presents a meta-analysis of the “cluster literature” contained in scientific journals from 1969 to 2007. Thanks to an original database we study the evolution of a stream of literature which focuses on a research object which is both a theoretical puzzle and an empirical widespread evidence. We identify different growth stages, from take-off to development and maturity. We test the existence of a life-cycle within the authorships and we discover the existence of a substitutability relation between different collaborative behaviours. We study the relationships between a “spatial” and an “industrial” approach within the textual corpus of cluster literature and we show the existence of a “predatory” interaction. We detect the relevance of clustering behaviours in the location of authors working on clusters and in measuring the influence of geographical distance in co-authorship. We measure the extent of a convergence process of the vocabulary of scientists working on clusters.Cluster, Life-Cycle, Cluster Literature, Textual Analysis, Agglomeration, Co-Authorship