The increasing public and institutional support for university patents has opened two major sources of debate: First, does this emphasis affect the quality of research? Second, are university patents an effective mechanism for university-industry interaction? Our aim is to address both questions by clarifying the nature of university patents as outputs of different types of research and inputs of diverse instruments of interaction. We focus on the case of the Polytechnic University of Valencia at departmental level. We first construct a patent production function to discriminate what kind of research gives rise to patents and, second, several funding functions to find for which instruments patents are a better input. University patents appear to be an output of costly and long-term oriented research, either publicly or privately financed -in this latter case, through an indirect effect, the provision of industrial knowledge-, and also the input of a certain type of interaction -not through licensing but through signalling competencies. The fear that university patents affect negatively the quality of research is not justified, as they are the outcome of research at the frontiers of science. However, it is true that university patents only stimulate interaction with those firms that have enough absorptive capacity. If interaction with less capable firms is intended, other instruments are required.

Resumen: Hasta la fecha los estudios normativos sobre el origen de patentes públicas han estado centrados en las patentes universitarias. Con este artículo extendemos el análisis a las patentes generadas en los organismos públicos de investigación (OPI). Desde una doble perspectiva, la histórica y la económica, y a través de la interpretación de tres factores institucionales (evolución de los cambios políticos y legales, primacía de unas áreas científi cas sobre otras y aumento de la cooperación tecnológica) se analiza qué lleva al Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científi cas (CSIC) a patentar. Para el último período, desde 1987, hemos cuantifi cado el impacto de estos factores en las patentes. Hemos concluido que el marco institucional resulta efi caz en un organismo como el CSIC para crear una cultura favorable a la patente. La aproximación histórica defi ne períodos homogéneos de análisis y guía la interpretación de los resultados y sus efectos a lo largo del tiempo, mientras que la aproximación económica cuantifi ca algunas de las relaciones y pone en cuestión la validez de las clasifi caciones meramente descriptivas, por ejemplo, de las áreas científi cas según el número de patentes.Palabras clave: patente; organismo público de investigación, enfoque interdisciplinar, CSIC.* INGENIO (CSIC-UPV) y JRC IPTS (Comisión Europea). Sevilla, España. Correo-e: joaquinmaria.azagra-caro@ec.europa.eu.Esta investigación fue llevada a cabo principalmente mientras este autor trabajaba en INGENIO, pero, desde el 1 de diciembre de 2006, ha estado trabajando en el JRC IPTS. Las opiniones expresadas en este artículo son las del autor y no refl ejan necesariamente las de la Comisión Europea. Ni la Comisión Europea ni otra persona actuando en representación de la Comisión es responsable del uso que pueda hacerse de la información siguiente.

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Cómo citar este artículo/Citation: Azagra Caro, J. M. (2015). Acceso al conocimiento público universitario en España: patrones geográficos. Revista Española de Documentación Científica, 38(1): e074. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/redc.2015.1.1124Resumen: Las referencias bibliográficas contenidas en los documentos de patente son una fuente de información sobre el acceso al conocimiento público con que se justifica o ataca la novedad de la invención. En vez de la distinción habitual entre referencias por tipo de literatura citada, se aborda otra más original, por tipo de institución citada, y se pone el acento en las universidades. El acceso al conocimiento público universitario en España comparte tendencias europeas: está altamente internacionalizado y se accede sobre todo a universidades estadounidenses. Presenta algunas idiosincrasias, como el acceso relativamente infrecuente al Instituto Tecnológico de Massachussets; y la elevada frecuencia de citas a universidades holandesas e israelíes. Además, se accede a universidades de la propia región mucho más que en otros estados miembros (sobre todo en comunidades distintas de Madrid). Respecto al acceso de otros países de la UE27, Alemania cita relativamente poco a las universidades españolas y la única citada por encima de la media europea es la Autónoma de Madrid. Se ofrece a los gestores de política algunas recomendaciones para influir sobre alguna de estas características de acuerdo con ciertos criterios de deseabilidad.Palabras clave: Flujos de conocimiento; vínculos universidad-tecnología; patentes; citas. Spanish access to universities' public knowledge: geographical patternsAbstract: References in patent documents are information sources about access to public knowledge, on which the invention's novelty, or lack thereof, can be justified. Usually references are broken down by type of cited literature, but we do it in a more original way: by type of cited institution. We focus on universities and compare Spain with the European Union 27 at national, regional and institutional levels. Access to public knowledge in Spain is similar to the overall European trends: highly internationalised with American universities being the most accessed. But Spain presents some idiosyncrasies: infrequent access to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and frequent access to Dutch and Israeli universities. Also access to universities from the same region occurs more often than in other Member States (especially in regions other than Madrid). In reference to the situation in other EU members, access to Spanish universities from Germany is relatively low and the only university with citations above the European average is the Autonomous University of Madrid. We offer policymakers some recommendations for modifying these characteristics according to certain desirability criteria.

Policymakers and university managers tend to express their willingness to maximise universityindustry interaction inside the region. Implicitly they assume that the incentives and possibilities of all firms and faculty to interact inside the region are homogenous. However, there is no a priori reason to justify that interaction will not take place outside the region. The objective of this research is to analyse what type of firm managers and faculty members interact more often inside and outside the region. We use a sample of 700 firm managers and 380 faculty members from the Valencian Community, a Spanish region, coming from two surveys. Our dependent variables are proxies for the propensity to interact and the frequency of interaction inside and outside the region. Because of their qualitative nature, we run discrete choice econometric models to find their determinants. We include institutional and input variables and personal characteristics as regressors. Firm managers need a high academic degree to engage into R&D cooperation with universities, but then the frequency of cooperation with universities inside the region depends on their firm's revenue. On the other hand, the frequency of R&D cooperation with universities outside the region depends on being part of a group. Faculty members who usually participate in contracts (male, senior, managerial faculty) do not do it more frequently with firms inside the region. In contrast, some faculty members who do no stand out for participation in contracts (those who have done research abroad for longer periods) do it so frequently with firms inside the region as with firms outside the region. We discuss first, the key role that human capital plays at firms for interaction to take place inside the region. Second, to what extent our results are idiosyncratic of a region with low absorptive capacity like the Valencian Community. We conclude that policymakers and university managers should design conscious strategies to find equilibrium between university-industry interaction inside and outside the region.