0000000000928983
AUTHOR
Elena Castro-martínez
Science and Technology Policies: a tale of political use, misuse and abuse of traditional R&D indicators
6 tables, 2 figures, 18 pages
La Vinculación Ciencia-Sociedad: Estereotipos y Nuevos Enfoques
[ES]: La importancia social de la ciencia ha evolucionado notablemente desde mediados del siglo XX, dando lugar a un cambio en el enfoque y desarrollo de la actividad científica. En este contexto, se ha producido un aumento notable de los estudios que analizan en profundidad los procesos de intercambio y transferencia de conocimiento que se producen entre los investigadores y los agentes sociales, en gran medida para su promoción desde las políticas científicas e institucionales. Este artículo describe la evolución de los enfoques sobre las relaciones ciencia-sociedad y analiza los principales elementos de los procesos de intercambio y transferencia de conocimiento mediante un estudio empír…
Organization and Management of Cultural Festivals: New Challenges in the Digital Age?
While a niche subject in the research literature, cultural festivals have been gaining prominence all around the world in recent years - as attested to by the increasing number offestivals worldwide. Even the Covid-19 pandemic has helped to draw attention to these events, which have been deeply affected by the safety measures and repeated lockdowns. Festivals are one of the most diffused examples of 'living production' within the cultural and creative industries (Luonila and Johansson 2016). We are thus contributing to an economic revival and local/regional interest in festivals: they are considered an opportunity for small cities to establish their identity and gain visibility that otherwi…
Strengthening SMEs’ innovation culture through collaborations with public research organizations. Do all firms benefit equally?
The purpose of this paper is to explore whether collaborating with public research organizations (PROs) contributes to strengthening the innovation culture of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). We examine to what extent their innovation culture is reinforced by collaborations with research organizations and investigate the type of organizational strategies that enhance this effect of collaboration. The empirical study is based on a survey of firms that collaborate with the largest Spanish PRO, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Our results indicate that SMEs differ greatly in their capacity to strengthen their innovation culture through collaboration with research organizatio…
Do Perceptions of Academic Scientists Influence Non-Academic Collaboration?
The recognition of academic research as a potential source of economic growth and social welfare has attracted the attention of both policymakers and academics over the past decades. Incentives have been introduced by policymakers to encourage academics to make their research accessible to wider audiences to improve societal benefits. Academics may work as part of collaborative R&D teams that help to benefit their research, such as to increase academic access to facilities and resources. However, this engagement may come with a potential cost or what has sometimes been referred to as the “dark side of collaboration.” Engaging with non-academic partners in collaborative R&D projects can have…
Current missions of public universities: a sociological perspective
Licencia Creative Commons Reconocimiento-No comercial 3.0 España.
Evaluación de las instituciones de educación superior: revisión bibliográfica de sistema de indicadores
[ES]: En las últimas décadas, las universidades están experimentando nuevos roles y tendencias que tienen serias implicaciones en su estructura y funcionamiento. Los gobiernos y organismos implicados en la educación superior están implementando estrategias para mejorar la eficiencia en las universidades y así asegurar su correcto funcionamiento. En este sentido, son muchos los estudios que abordan la evaluación de las universidades mediante la utilización de sistemas de indicadores. En este artículo se presenta una revisión bibliográfica de algunas de las propuestas de indicadores utilizados en la evaluación de las universidades en países de la OCDE, dedicando especial atención a los elabor…
Scientists’ engagement in knowledge transfer and exchange: Individual factors, variety of mechanisms and users
[EN] This article aims to provide a deeper understanding of the individual factors behind scientists' involvement in a wide variety of knowledge transfer and exchange (KTE) activities. By doing so, the article addresses three major shortcomings in the literature. First, this article considers scientists' involvement in both formal and informal KTE activities. Secondly, the study focuses not only on KTE activities with the private sector, but also with other types of agents. Thirdly, the article adopts an individual approach to distinguish between three types of KTE predictors: individual capacities, training and career trajectories, and motivations. Overall, the results of the regression mo…
Does it take two to tango? Factors related to the ease of societal uptake of scientific knowledge
Science policy increasingly focuses on maximising societal benefits from science and technology investments, but often reduces those benefits to activities involving codifying and selling knowledge, thereby idealising best practice academic behaviours around entrepreneurial superstars. This paper argues that societal value depends on knowledge being used, making knowledge's eventual exploitation partly dependent upon on whether other users-societal or scientific-can use that knowledge (i.e. on how far new knowledge is cognate with users' existing knowledge). When scientists incorporate user knowledge into their research processes, what we call 'open research behaviours', their knowledge may…
Does usable research face higher obstacles within the academy?
The recognition of academic research as a potential source of economic growth and social welfare has attracted the attention of both policy-makers and academics over the past decades. But emphasising the impact of research brings a new set of tensions to scientific governance processes, and raises the risk that academics who engage more with users be hindered in pursuing their research activities. In this paper, we seek to understand whether researchers that meaningfully engage with societal users in their research micro-practices face additional obstacles in their research, whether in terms of the acceptance of that research by academic communities and the absorption of that knowledge by u…