Giovanni Abramo - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Giovanni Abramo
Journal of Informetrics, 2022
Scientometrics, 2020
This work applies a new approach to measure knowledge flows. Assuming that citation linkages betw... more This work applies a new approach to measure knowledge flows. Assuming that citation linkages between articles imply a flow of knowledge from the cited to the citing authors, we investigate the geographic flows of scientific knowledge produced in Italy across its regions, at both overall and field level. Furthermore, we measure the the specialization indexes for outflows and inflows of knowledge by a given region. Findings show that larger regions in terms of research output are more likely net exporters of new knowledge. At the same time, we register a positive correlation between the share of intraregional flows and the size of overall scientific output of a region.
While Italy’s R&D expenses as a percentage of GNP are among the lowest within the industrialized ... more While Italy’s R&D expenses as a percentage of GNP are among the lowest within the industrialized countries, the share financed by the government is among the highest. Only a little portion of public research results, as measured by patent licenses, is transferred to Industry, while the Italian technology balance of payments is chronically negative. This study explores one of the possible causes of the poor technology transfer between public research institutions and Industry, namely the misalignment between technology supply and demand. A survey of the leading public research scientists in four high-tech sectors has been carried out. Findings show that, while most research project results seem to have immediate industrial applicability, the largest majority of respondents prefer to encode new knowledge as scientific paper rather than patent. One third of such research results have no Italian companies able to exploit them. The complementary two thirds do have them, according to the ...
Scientometrics, 2021
In this paper we develop a methodology to assess the scientific wealth of territories at field le... more In this paper we develop a methodology to assess the scientific wealth of territories at field level. Our methodology uses a bibliometric approach based on the observation of academic research performance and overall scientific production in each territory. We apply it to assess disparities in the Italian territories in the medical specialties at the front line of the COVID-19 emergency. Italy has been the first among western countries to be severely affected by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study reveals remarkable inequities across territories, with scientific weaknesses concentrated in the south. Policies for rebalancing the north–south divide should also consider, in addition to tangible assets, the gap in production and availability of quality medical knowledge.
Journal of Informetrics, 2020
This is the first ever attempt of application in a country other than Italy of the outputto-input... more This is the first ever attempt of application in a country other than Italy of the outputto-input indicator FSS, to assess and compare the research performance of professors and universities, within and between countries. A special attention has been devoted to the presentation of the methodology developed to set up a common field classification scheme of professors, and to overcome the limited availability of comparable input data. Results of the comparison between countries, carried out in the 2011-2015 period, show similar average performances of professors, but noticeable differences in the distributions, whereby Norwegian professors are more concentrated in the tails. Norway shows notable higher performance in Mathematics and Earth and Space Sciences, while Italy in Biomedical Research and Engineering.
Journal of Informetrics, 2019
The ability to predict the long-term impact of a scientific article soon after its publication is... more The ability to predict the long-term impact of a scientific article soon after its publication is of great value towards accurate assessment of research performance. In this work we test the hypothesis that good predictions of long-term citation counts can be obtained through a combination of a publication's early citations and the impact factor of the hosting journal. The test is performed on a corpus of 123,128 WoS publications authored by Italian scientists, using linear regression models. The average accuracy of the prediction is good for citation time windows above two years, decreases for lowly-cited publications, and varies across disciplines. As expected, the role of the impact factor in the combination becomes negligible after only two years from publication.
Journal of Informetrics, 2016
Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose... more Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
Scientometrics, 2009
The state of the art on the issue of sex differences in research efficiency agrees in recognizing... more The state of the art on the issue of sex differences in research efficiency agrees in recognizing higher performances for males, however there are divergences in explaining the possible causes. One of the causes advanced is that there are sex differences in the availability of aptitude at the "high end". By comparing sex differences in concentration and performance of Italian academic star scientists to the case in the population complement, this work aims to verify if star, or "high-end", scientists play a preponderant role in determining higher performance among males. The study reveals the existence of a greater relative concentration of males among star scientists, as well as a performance gap between male and female star scientists that is greater than for the rest of the population. In the latter subpopulation the performance gap between the two sexs is seen as truly marginal.
Scientometrics, 2011
The study presents a time-series analysis of field-standardized average impact of Italian researc... more The study presents a time-series analysis of field-standardized average impact of Italian research compared to the world average. The approach is purely bibliometric, based on census of the full scientific production from all Italian public research organizations active in 2001-2006 (hard sciences only). The analysis is conducted both at sectorial level (aggregated, by scientific discipline and for single fields within disciplines) and at organizational level (by type of organization and for single organizations). The essence of the methodology should be replicable in all other national contexts. Its offers support to policy-makers and administrators for strategic analysis aimed at identifying strengths and weaknesses of national research systems and institutions.
Scientometrics, 2010
Policy makers, at various levels of governance, generally encourage the development of research c... more Policy makers, at various levels of governance, generally encourage the development of research collaboration. However the underlying determinants of collaboration are not completely clear. In particular, the literature lacks studies that, taking the individual researcher as the unit of analysis, attempt to understand if and to what extent the researcher's scientific performance might impact on his/her degree of collaboration with foreign colleagues. The current work examines the international collaborations of Italian university researchers for the period 2001-2005, and puts them in relation to each individual's research performance. The results of the investigation, which assumes co-authorship as proxy of research collaboration, show that both research productivity and average quality of output have positive effects on the degree of international collaboration achieved by a scientist.
Scientometrics, 2012
There has been ample demonstration that bibliometrics is superior to peer-review for national res... more There has been ample demonstration that bibliometrics is superior to peer-review for national research assessment exercises in the hard sciences. In this paper we examine the Italian case, taking the 2001-2003 university performance rankings list based on bibliometrics as benchmark. We compare the accuracy of the first national evaluation exercise, conducted entirely by peer-review, to other rankings lists prepared at zero cost, based on indicators indirectly linked to performance or available on the Internet. The results show that, for the hard sciences, the costs of conducting the Italian evaluation of research institutions could have been completely avoided.
Scientometrics, 2011
An increasing number of nations allocate public funds to research institutions on the basis of ra... more An increasing number of nations allocate public funds to research institutions on the basis of rankings obtained from national evaluation exercises. Therefore, in non-competitive higher education systems where top scientists are dispersed among all the universities, rather than concentrated among a few, there is a high risk of penalizing those top scientists who work in lower-performance universities. Using a five-year bibliometric analysis conducted on all Italian universities active in the hard sciences from 2004-2008, this work analyzes the distribution of publications and relevant citations by scientists within the universities, measures the research performance of individual scientists, quantifies the intensity of concentration of top scientists at each university, provides performance rankings for the universities, and indicates the effects of selective funding on the top scientists of low-ranked universities.
Science and Public Policy, 2015
In this work we investigate the determinants of professors' career advancement in Italian univers... more In this work we investigate the determinants of professors' career advancement in Italian universities. From the analyses, it emerges that the fundamental determinant of an academic candidate's success is not scientific merit, but rather the number of years that the candidate has belonged to the same university as the selection committee president. Where applicants have participated in research work with the president, their probability of success also increases significantly. The factors of the years of service and occurrence of joint research for the other commission members also have an effect, however of lesser weight. The specific phenomenon of nepotism, although it exists, seems less important. The scientific quality of the commission members has negligible effect on the expected outcome of the competition, and even more so the geographic location of the university calling for the competition.
R and D Management, 2012
One of the most problematic aspects in the creation of spin-offs by university personnel concerns... more One of the most problematic aspects in the creation of spin-offs by university personnel concerns the relationship between entrepreneurial activity and research activity by researcher-entrepreneurs. The literature has expressed varying and opposing views as to the nature of the relationship but very little has been produced to empirically legitimate one position or another. The present work proposes to address this shortcoming by exploring the relationship existing between academic spin-off generation and the research performance of enterprise founders. The study investigates whether, and to what extent, scientific performance by academic entrepreneurs is different than that of their colleagues, and if the involvement in entrepreneurial activity has an influence on the individual's research activity. The research questions are answered by considering all spin-offs generated by Italian universities over the period 2001-2008 and evaluating, through a bibliometric approach, the scientific performance of founders relative to that of their colleagues who carry out research in the same field. The data show better scientific performance by the researcherentrepreneurs than that of their colleagues and in addition, although there are some variations across fields, the creation of a spin-off does not seem, on average, to have negative effects on the scientific performance of the founders.
Scientometrics, 2011
This work analyses the links between individual research performance and academic rank. A typical... more This work analyses the links between individual research performance and academic rank. A typical bibliometric methodology is used to study the performance of all Italian university researchers active in the hard sciences, for the period 2004-2008. The objective is to characterize the performance of the ranks of full, associate and assistant professors, along various dimensions, in order to verify the existence of performance differences among the ranks in general and for single disciplines.
Technovation, 2009
This work investigates public-private research collaboration between Italian universities and dom... more This work investigates public-private research collaboration between Italian universities and domestic industry, applying a bibliometric type of approach. The study is based on an exhaustive listing of all co-authored publications in international journals that are jointly realized by Italian university scientists and researchers in the private sector: this listing permits the development of a national mapping system for public-private collaboration, which results unique for its extensive and representative character. It is shown that, in absolute terms, most collaborations occur in medicine and chemistry, while it is industrial and information engineering which shows the highest percentage of co-authored articles out of all articles in the field. In addition, the investigation empirically examines and tests several hypotheses concerning the qualitative-quantitative impact of collaboration on the scientific production of individual university researchers. The analyses demonstrate that university researchers who collaborate with those in the private sector show research performance that is superior to that of colleagues who are not involved in such collaboration. But the impact factor of journals publishing academic articles co-authored by industry is generally lower than that concerning co-authorships with other entities. Finally, a further specific elaboration also reveals that publications with public-private co-authorship do not show a level of multidisciplinarity that is significantly different than that of other publications.
Studies in Higher Education, 2013
Higher education systems featuring intense competition have developed world-class universities, c... more Higher education systems featuring intense competition have developed world-class universities, capable of attracting top professors and students and considerable publicprivate funding. This does not occur in non-competitive systems, where highly-talented faculty and students are dispersed across all institutions. In such systems, the authors propose the budding of spin-off universities, staffed by migration of top scientists from the entire public research system. This work illustrate the proposal through an example: the spin-off of a new university in Rome-Italy staffed with the best professors from the three current public city universities. Such a faculty would offer top national research productivity, a magnet to attract the other critical ingredients of a world-class university: talented students, abundant resources and visionary governance.
Scientometrics, 2013
The ability to activate and manage effective collaborations is becoming an increasingly important... more The ability to activate and manage effective collaborations is becoming an increasingly important criteria in policies on academic career advancement. The rise of such policies leads to development of indicators that permit measurement of the propensity to collaborate for academics of different ranks, and to examine the role of several variables in collaboration, first among these being the researchers' disciplines. In this work we apply an innovative bibliometric approach based on individual propensity for collaboration to measure the differences in propensity across academic ranks, by discipline and for choice of collaboration forms-intramural, extramural domestic and international. The analysis is based on the scientific production of Italian academics for the period 2006 to 2010, totaling over 200,000 publications indexed in Web of Science. It shows that assistant professors register a propensity for intramural collaboration that is clearly greater than for professors of higher ranks. Vice versa, the higher ranks, but not quite so clearly, register greater propensity to collaborate at the international level.
Scientometrics, 2013
One of the critical issues in national research assessment exercises concerns the choice of wheth... more One of the critical issues in national research assessment exercises concerns the choice of whether to evaluate the entire scientific portfolio of the institutions or a subset composed of the best products. Under the second option, the capacities of the institutions to select the appropriate researchers and their best products (the UK case) or simply the best products of every researcher (the Italian case) becomes critical, both for purposes of correct assessment of the real quality of research in the institutions evaluated, and for the selective funding that follows. In this work, through case studies of three Italian universities, we analyze the efficiency of the product selection that is intended to maximize the universities' scores in the current national research assessment exercise, the results of which will be the basis for assigning an important share of public financing over the coming years.
Science and Public Policy, 2009
Italy lags quite behind vis-à-vis other industrialized countries, in public to private technology... more Italy lags quite behind vis-à-vis other industrialized countries, in public to private technology transfer. One of the possible causes might be the mismatch between new knowledge supplied by public research and industry demand. We test this hypothesis through a survey of leading public research scientists in four high-tech sectors. The findings show that most research project results seem to be of immediate industrial interest, which contrasts with the low patent and licensing performances of Italian public research institutions. For one third of all the results of the research, there are no Italian companies able to exploit them. The same, however, is not true for the remaining results, which shows that the misalignment between public supply and industry demand alone cannot account for poor technology transfer. What emerges from our investigation is that a closer coordination of research policy and industrial policy is required, as well as closer attention to initiatives which may support the transfer of public research results to domestic industry.
Journal of Informetrics, 2022
Scientometrics, 2020
This work applies a new approach to measure knowledge flows. Assuming that citation linkages betw... more This work applies a new approach to measure knowledge flows. Assuming that citation linkages between articles imply a flow of knowledge from the cited to the citing authors, we investigate the geographic flows of scientific knowledge produced in Italy across its regions, at both overall and field level. Furthermore, we measure the the specialization indexes for outflows and inflows of knowledge by a given region. Findings show that larger regions in terms of research output are more likely net exporters of new knowledge. At the same time, we register a positive correlation between the share of intraregional flows and the size of overall scientific output of a region.
While Italy’s R&D expenses as a percentage of GNP are among the lowest within the industrialized ... more While Italy’s R&D expenses as a percentage of GNP are among the lowest within the industrialized countries, the share financed by the government is among the highest. Only a little portion of public research results, as measured by patent licenses, is transferred to Industry, while the Italian technology balance of payments is chronically negative. This study explores one of the possible causes of the poor technology transfer between public research institutions and Industry, namely the misalignment between technology supply and demand. A survey of the leading public research scientists in four high-tech sectors has been carried out. Findings show that, while most research project results seem to have immediate industrial applicability, the largest majority of respondents prefer to encode new knowledge as scientific paper rather than patent. One third of such research results have no Italian companies able to exploit them. The complementary two thirds do have them, according to the ...
Scientometrics, 2021
In this paper we develop a methodology to assess the scientific wealth of territories at field le... more In this paper we develop a methodology to assess the scientific wealth of territories at field level. Our methodology uses a bibliometric approach based on the observation of academic research performance and overall scientific production in each territory. We apply it to assess disparities in the Italian territories in the medical specialties at the front line of the COVID-19 emergency. Italy has been the first among western countries to be severely affected by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study reveals remarkable inequities across territories, with scientific weaknesses concentrated in the south. Policies for rebalancing the north–south divide should also consider, in addition to tangible assets, the gap in production and availability of quality medical knowledge.
Journal of Informetrics, 2020
This is the first ever attempt of application in a country other than Italy of the outputto-input... more This is the first ever attempt of application in a country other than Italy of the outputto-input indicator FSS, to assess and compare the research performance of professors and universities, within and between countries. A special attention has been devoted to the presentation of the methodology developed to set up a common field classification scheme of professors, and to overcome the limited availability of comparable input data. Results of the comparison between countries, carried out in the 2011-2015 period, show similar average performances of professors, but noticeable differences in the distributions, whereby Norwegian professors are more concentrated in the tails. Norway shows notable higher performance in Mathematics and Earth and Space Sciences, while Italy in Biomedical Research and Engineering.
Journal of Informetrics, 2019
The ability to predict the long-term impact of a scientific article soon after its publication is... more The ability to predict the long-term impact of a scientific article soon after its publication is of great value towards accurate assessment of research performance. In this work we test the hypothesis that good predictions of long-term citation counts can be obtained through a combination of a publication's early citations and the impact factor of the hosting journal. The test is performed on a corpus of 123,128 WoS publications authored by Italian scientists, using linear regression models. The average accuracy of the prediction is good for citation time windows above two years, decreases for lowly-cited publications, and varies across disciplines. As expected, the role of the impact factor in the combination becomes negligible after only two years from publication.
Journal of Informetrics, 2016
Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose... more Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
Scientometrics, 2009
The state of the art on the issue of sex differences in research efficiency agrees in recognizing... more The state of the art on the issue of sex differences in research efficiency agrees in recognizing higher performances for males, however there are divergences in explaining the possible causes. One of the causes advanced is that there are sex differences in the availability of aptitude at the "high end". By comparing sex differences in concentration and performance of Italian academic star scientists to the case in the population complement, this work aims to verify if star, or "high-end", scientists play a preponderant role in determining higher performance among males. The study reveals the existence of a greater relative concentration of males among star scientists, as well as a performance gap between male and female star scientists that is greater than for the rest of the population. In the latter subpopulation the performance gap between the two sexs is seen as truly marginal.
Scientometrics, 2011
The study presents a time-series analysis of field-standardized average impact of Italian researc... more The study presents a time-series analysis of field-standardized average impact of Italian research compared to the world average. The approach is purely bibliometric, based on census of the full scientific production from all Italian public research organizations active in 2001-2006 (hard sciences only). The analysis is conducted both at sectorial level (aggregated, by scientific discipline and for single fields within disciplines) and at organizational level (by type of organization and for single organizations). The essence of the methodology should be replicable in all other national contexts. Its offers support to policy-makers and administrators for strategic analysis aimed at identifying strengths and weaknesses of national research systems and institutions.
Scientometrics, 2010
Policy makers, at various levels of governance, generally encourage the development of research c... more Policy makers, at various levels of governance, generally encourage the development of research collaboration. However the underlying determinants of collaboration are not completely clear. In particular, the literature lacks studies that, taking the individual researcher as the unit of analysis, attempt to understand if and to what extent the researcher's scientific performance might impact on his/her degree of collaboration with foreign colleagues. The current work examines the international collaborations of Italian university researchers for the period 2001-2005, and puts them in relation to each individual's research performance. The results of the investigation, which assumes co-authorship as proxy of research collaboration, show that both research productivity and average quality of output have positive effects on the degree of international collaboration achieved by a scientist.
Scientometrics, 2012
There has been ample demonstration that bibliometrics is superior to peer-review for national res... more There has been ample demonstration that bibliometrics is superior to peer-review for national research assessment exercises in the hard sciences. In this paper we examine the Italian case, taking the 2001-2003 university performance rankings list based on bibliometrics as benchmark. We compare the accuracy of the first national evaluation exercise, conducted entirely by peer-review, to other rankings lists prepared at zero cost, based on indicators indirectly linked to performance or available on the Internet. The results show that, for the hard sciences, the costs of conducting the Italian evaluation of research institutions could have been completely avoided.
Scientometrics, 2011
An increasing number of nations allocate public funds to research institutions on the basis of ra... more An increasing number of nations allocate public funds to research institutions on the basis of rankings obtained from national evaluation exercises. Therefore, in non-competitive higher education systems where top scientists are dispersed among all the universities, rather than concentrated among a few, there is a high risk of penalizing those top scientists who work in lower-performance universities. Using a five-year bibliometric analysis conducted on all Italian universities active in the hard sciences from 2004-2008, this work analyzes the distribution of publications and relevant citations by scientists within the universities, measures the research performance of individual scientists, quantifies the intensity of concentration of top scientists at each university, provides performance rankings for the universities, and indicates the effects of selective funding on the top scientists of low-ranked universities.
Science and Public Policy, 2015
In this work we investigate the determinants of professors' career advancement in Italian univers... more In this work we investigate the determinants of professors' career advancement in Italian universities. From the analyses, it emerges that the fundamental determinant of an academic candidate's success is not scientific merit, but rather the number of years that the candidate has belonged to the same university as the selection committee president. Where applicants have participated in research work with the president, their probability of success also increases significantly. The factors of the years of service and occurrence of joint research for the other commission members also have an effect, however of lesser weight. The specific phenomenon of nepotism, although it exists, seems less important. The scientific quality of the commission members has negligible effect on the expected outcome of the competition, and even more so the geographic location of the university calling for the competition.
R and D Management, 2012
One of the most problematic aspects in the creation of spin-offs by university personnel concerns... more One of the most problematic aspects in the creation of spin-offs by university personnel concerns the relationship between entrepreneurial activity and research activity by researcher-entrepreneurs. The literature has expressed varying and opposing views as to the nature of the relationship but very little has been produced to empirically legitimate one position or another. The present work proposes to address this shortcoming by exploring the relationship existing between academic spin-off generation and the research performance of enterprise founders. The study investigates whether, and to what extent, scientific performance by academic entrepreneurs is different than that of their colleagues, and if the involvement in entrepreneurial activity has an influence on the individual's research activity. The research questions are answered by considering all spin-offs generated by Italian universities over the period 2001-2008 and evaluating, through a bibliometric approach, the scientific performance of founders relative to that of their colleagues who carry out research in the same field. The data show better scientific performance by the researcherentrepreneurs than that of their colleagues and in addition, although there are some variations across fields, the creation of a spin-off does not seem, on average, to have negative effects on the scientific performance of the founders.
Scientometrics, 2011
This work analyses the links between individual research performance and academic rank. A typical... more This work analyses the links between individual research performance and academic rank. A typical bibliometric methodology is used to study the performance of all Italian university researchers active in the hard sciences, for the period 2004-2008. The objective is to characterize the performance of the ranks of full, associate and assistant professors, along various dimensions, in order to verify the existence of performance differences among the ranks in general and for single disciplines.
Technovation, 2009
This work investigates public-private research collaboration between Italian universities and dom... more This work investigates public-private research collaboration between Italian universities and domestic industry, applying a bibliometric type of approach. The study is based on an exhaustive listing of all co-authored publications in international journals that are jointly realized by Italian university scientists and researchers in the private sector: this listing permits the development of a national mapping system for public-private collaboration, which results unique for its extensive and representative character. It is shown that, in absolute terms, most collaborations occur in medicine and chemistry, while it is industrial and information engineering which shows the highest percentage of co-authored articles out of all articles in the field. In addition, the investigation empirically examines and tests several hypotheses concerning the qualitative-quantitative impact of collaboration on the scientific production of individual university researchers. The analyses demonstrate that university researchers who collaborate with those in the private sector show research performance that is superior to that of colleagues who are not involved in such collaboration. But the impact factor of journals publishing academic articles co-authored by industry is generally lower than that concerning co-authorships with other entities. Finally, a further specific elaboration also reveals that publications with public-private co-authorship do not show a level of multidisciplinarity that is significantly different than that of other publications.
Studies in Higher Education, 2013
Higher education systems featuring intense competition have developed world-class universities, c... more Higher education systems featuring intense competition have developed world-class universities, capable of attracting top professors and students and considerable publicprivate funding. This does not occur in non-competitive systems, where highly-talented faculty and students are dispersed across all institutions. In such systems, the authors propose the budding of spin-off universities, staffed by migration of top scientists from the entire public research system. This work illustrate the proposal through an example: the spin-off of a new university in Rome-Italy staffed with the best professors from the three current public city universities. Such a faculty would offer top national research productivity, a magnet to attract the other critical ingredients of a world-class university: talented students, abundant resources and visionary governance.
Scientometrics, 2013
The ability to activate and manage effective collaborations is becoming an increasingly important... more The ability to activate and manage effective collaborations is becoming an increasingly important criteria in policies on academic career advancement. The rise of such policies leads to development of indicators that permit measurement of the propensity to collaborate for academics of different ranks, and to examine the role of several variables in collaboration, first among these being the researchers' disciplines. In this work we apply an innovative bibliometric approach based on individual propensity for collaboration to measure the differences in propensity across academic ranks, by discipline and for choice of collaboration forms-intramural, extramural domestic and international. The analysis is based on the scientific production of Italian academics for the period 2006 to 2010, totaling over 200,000 publications indexed in Web of Science. It shows that assistant professors register a propensity for intramural collaboration that is clearly greater than for professors of higher ranks. Vice versa, the higher ranks, but not quite so clearly, register greater propensity to collaborate at the international level.
Scientometrics, 2013
One of the critical issues in national research assessment exercises concerns the choice of wheth... more One of the critical issues in national research assessment exercises concerns the choice of whether to evaluate the entire scientific portfolio of the institutions or a subset composed of the best products. Under the second option, the capacities of the institutions to select the appropriate researchers and their best products (the UK case) or simply the best products of every researcher (the Italian case) becomes critical, both for purposes of correct assessment of the real quality of research in the institutions evaluated, and for the selective funding that follows. In this work, through case studies of three Italian universities, we analyze the efficiency of the product selection that is intended to maximize the universities' scores in the current national research assessment exercise, the results of which will be the basis for assigning an important share of public financing over the coming years.
Science and Public Policy, 2009
Italy lags quite behind vis-à-vis other industrialized countries, in public to private technology... more Italy lags quite behind vis-à-vis other industrialized countries, in public to private technology transfer. One of the possible causes might be the mismatch between new knowledge supplied by public research and industry demand. We test this hypothesis through a survey of leading public research scientists in four high-tech sectors. The findings show that most research project results seem to be of immediate industrial interest, which contrasts with the low patent and licensing performances of Italian public research institutions. For one third of all the results of the research, there are no Italian companies able to exploit them. The same, however, is not true for the remaining results, which shows that the misalignment between public supply and industry demand alone cannot account for poor technology transfer. What emerges from our investigation is that a closer coordination of research policy and industrial policy is required, as well as closer attention to initiatives which may support the transfer of public research results to domestic industry.