Access to Research Inputs: Open Science Versus the Entrepreneurial University
ZEW Discussion Paper No. 14-018 // 2014Recent decades have seen a shift in academic research towards the 'entrepreneurial university' model. Researchers are encouraged to actively participate in innovation through channels such as academic patenting, joint work with industry, or academic entrepreneurship. Besides obvious benefits of technology transfer and increased funding at research institutions through industry collaborations, scholars have expressed concerns that the shift towards entrepreneurial universities may entail negative implications for the rate and direction of academic research. Examples include trade-offs between publishing and patenting, academic entrepreneurship and the ‘brain drain’ in academia, the dissemination of research results, and the withholding of information, data and materials on which research is based.
In this paper, we focus on how extramural and in particular industry funding of academic research affect academics’ sharing behavior. Our research builds on a broad individual-level dataset of German academics. In the regressions we disentangle total extramural funding received from funding that comes specifically from industry sponsors and find that, controlling for personal characteristics, research characteristics, institutional affiliations, and scientific fields, scientists who receive external funding from any source are more likely to be denied access to others’ research results or materials. Those who receive industry funding are more likely to deny others’ requests for access. These results reflect the changes in incentives of researchers to disclose as funding moves towards the private sector. Our results have implications for both science institutions and funding bodies.
Czarnitzki, Dirk, Christoph Grimpe and Maikel Pellens (2014), Access to Research Inputs: Open Science Versus the Entrepreneurial University, ZEW Discussion Paper No. 14-018, Mannheim, published in: Journal of Technology Transfer.