There are both benefits and risks involved in interactions between public research organisations (PROs) and industry. This paper proposes a conceptual framework that associates firms' and PROs' motivations, channels of interaction and benefits. It suggests that each channel triggers predominant types of benefits and claims that policy-making to support PRO-industry (PRO-I) interactions should be selective. Policy design must take into consideration the skill-related characteristics of the actors, and the characteristics of the interaction channels in order to achieve the best possible balance between the benefits and risks of PRO-I interactions. The geographical focus of the discussion is Latin America.

No abstract

This paper compares the results of four country studies (Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica and Mexico) on the relative effectiveness of channels of interactions between public research organisations (PROs) and industry in driving specific types of benefits for researchers and firms. All studies used micro-datasets developed by a joint project using common questionnaires. Channels of interactions were classified into four groups (traditional, services, bi-directional and commercial) while benefits were classified into two groups for firms (short-term production and long-term innovation) and for researchers (economic and intellectual). It is found that the bi-directional (knowledge flows in both directions) and the services (knowledge flows mainly from PROs to firms) channels drive intellectual benefits for researchers. Firms tend to value the traditional channel (i.e. graduates, publications, conferences) more than any other channel. However, it is the bi-directional channel that drives the best benefits, especially those related to contributions to innovation activities.

Open science aims at the creation of public scientific goods by means of sharing outputs and widening and facilitating collaboration, in one or many of the different research stages. There are many beneficial aspects of open science that have been claimed in the literature, such us improving research efficiency, accelerating creativity, democratizing knowledge and empowering stakeholders. These claims are normally based on anecdotal experiences. In this paper we aim at organizing the extant literature on benefits of open science, in an attempt to build a bi-dimensional framework that relates characteristics of openness with benefits to be expected. The first dimension accounts for the characteristics of the collaboration, while the second for aspects of access to shared outputs. In the conclusion, we briefly illustrate our framework using evidence from four Argentinean open science initiatives.

No abstract