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Diversified resources and academic influence: patterns of university–industry collaboration in Chinese research-oriented universities

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Abstract

This paper investigates the scope and patterns of university–industry collaborations (UICs) in Chinese research-oriented universities. Based on the co-authored publications in international journals by Chinese universities’ academics and researchers from industries with the method of bibliometric and latent cluster analysis, this study provides detailed results on the characters and clustering features from two aspects, namely diversified resources and academic influence. The results show that, although the co-authored publications with industrial researchers only account for a small part of all publications of Chinese universities, the importance of cooperation with industries in the academic research and the scientific contribution have been strengthened in China. Meanwhile, the academic influence of co-authored publications is periodically improving, but still in the development stage of quantity rather than quality. The analyses demonstrate that there are significant differences in the matching relationship of diversified resources and academic influence between universities. Only few UICs are in both the high level of diversified resources and strong academic influence. Most of UICs should attempt to maintain diversified resources advantages whilst also try to enhance academic influence of cooperation outcomes.

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Acknowledgments

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 71473086, 71233003); Key Projects of Philosophy and Social Sciences Research, Ministry of education (Grant No. 12JZD042) and the National Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province in China (Grant No. S2013010011823). And we would like to thank Yi Li since she made a contribution to completing the preliminary work. We also appreciate that the great advices are provided by the reviewers.

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  1. School of Business Administration, South China University of Technology, No. 381, Wushan Road, Guangzhou, 510640, Guangdong, China

    Xia Fan, Xiaowan Yang & Liming Chen

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  1. Xia Fan
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Correspondence to Xia Fan.

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Fan, X., Yang, X. & Chen, L. Diversified resources and academic influence: patterns of university–industry collaboration in Chinese research-oriented universities. Scientometrics 104, 489–509 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1618-2

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