Entrepreneurship is a strategic element for promoting the socio-economic development of countries or regions, encouraging the creation of new businesses and the generation of technological innovations. In this context, the concept of entrepreneurial university emerges, an institution based on the generation and transfer of knowledge, from the development of teaching, research, extension and entrepreneurial activities. Thus, this research sought to identify in the scientific literature factors and structures that contribute to the formation of an entrepreneurial university. Therefore, a search was performed in the SCOPUS database with the search string "entrepreneurial university" or "enterprising university" and then applied the filters 'All Open Access' and 'Sort on: Cited by (highest)'. The articles were analyzed according to the following elements: year; title; objective; summary; key words; conclusion; and number of citations. The main results indicate that the conception of the entrepreneurial university requires planning and the existence of management models that contemplate, in addition to basic activities, entrepreneurial actions focused on developing entrepreneurial behavior and promoting economic and social development. In addition, the scientific literature has presented models of several factors and structures that contribute to the formation of the entrepreneurial university.