Étiquette : Knowledge Economy

Might Europe one day again be a global scientific powerhouse? Analysis of ERC publications suggests it will not be possible without changes in research policy

Authors : Alonso Rodríguez-Navarro, Ricardo Brito

Numerous EU documents praise the excellence of EU research without empirical evidence and against academic studies. We investigated research performance in two fields of high socioeconomic importance, advanced technology and basic medical research, in two sets of European countries, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain (GFIS), and the UK, the Netherlands, and Switzerland (UKNCH). Despite historical and geographical proximity, research performance in GFIS is much lower than in UKNCH, and well below the world average.

Funding from the European Research Council (ERC) greatly improves performance both in GFIS and UKNCH, but ERC-GFIS publications are less cited than ERC-UKNCH publications.

We conclude that research performance in GFIS and in other EU countries is intrinsically low even when it is generously funded. The technological and economic future of the EU depends on improving research, which requires structural changes in research policy within the EU, and in most EU countries.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.08975

The Economic Impacts of Open Science: A Rapid Evidence Assessment

Author : Michael J. Fell

A common motivation for increasing open access to research findings and data is the potential to create economic benefits—but evidence is patchy and diverse. This study systematically reviewed the evidence on what kinds of economic impacts (positive and negative) open science can have, how these comes about, and how benefits could be maximized.

Use of open science outputs often leaves no obvious trace, so most evidence of impacts is based on interviews, surveys, inference based on existing costs, and modelling approaches.

There is indicative evidence that open access to findings/data can lead to savings in access costs, labour costs and transaction costs. There are examples of open science enabling new products, services, companies, research and collaborations. Modelling studies suggest higher returns to R&D if open access permits greater accessibility and efficiency of use of findings. Barriers include lack of skills capacity in search, interpretation and text mining, and lack of clarity around where benefits accrue.

There are also contextual considerations around who benefits most from open science (e.g., sectors, small vs. larger companies, types of dataset). Recommendations captured in the review include more research, monitoring and evaluation (including developing metrics), promoting benefits, capacity building and making outputs more audience-friendly.

URL : The Economic Impacts of Open Science: A Rapid Evidence Assessment

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7030046

Joining Voices: University – Industry Partnerships in the Humanities

Authors : Lynne Siemens, The INKE Research Group

University-industry partnerships are common in the Sciences, but less so in the Humanities. As a result, there is little understanding of how they work in the Humanities.

Using the Implementing New Knowledge Environments: Networked Open Social Scholarship (INKE:NOSS) initiative as a case study, this paper contributes to this discussion by examining the nature of the university-industry partnership with libraries and academic-adjacent organizations, and associated benefits, challenges, measures of success, and outcomes.

Interviews were conducted with the collaboration’s industry partners. After several years of collaboration on the development of a grant application, industry partners have found the experience of working with academics to be a positive one overall.

Industry partners are contributing primarily in-kind resources in the form of staff time, travel to meetings, and reading and commenting on documents. They have also been able to realize benefits while negotiating the challenges.

Using qualitative standards, measures of success and desired outcomes are being articulated. This work developing the partnership should stand the larger INKE:NOSS team in good stead if they are successful with securing grant funding.

URL : Joining Voices: University – Industry Partnerships in the Humanities

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/kula.42

The Open Revolution : Rewriting the rules of the information age

Author : Rufus Pollock

Forget everything you think you know about the digital age. It’s not about privacy, surveillance, AI or blockchain—it’s about ownership. Because, in a digital age, who owns information controls the future.

In this urgent and provocative book, Rufus Pollock shows how today’s “Closed” digital economy is the source of problems ranging from growing inequality, to unaffordable medicines, to the power of a handful of tech monopolies to control how we think and vote.

He proposes a solution that charts a path to a more equitable, innovative and profitable future for all.

URL : The Open Revolution : Rewriting the rules of the information age

Alternative location : https://openrevolution.net/

Ouverture et partage des résultats de la recherche dans l’économie de la connaissance européenne : Quelle(s) liberté(s) de circulation pour l’IST?

Auteur/Author : Hans Dillaerts

Au cours de ces dix dernières années, il y a un engagement croissant de l’Union européenne en faveur de l’innovation ouverte, le libre accès et la science ouverte. Notre objectif au sein de cet article est de s’interroger sur les origines de ces politiques et d’en retracer les évolutions et les limites.

L’objectif de cette analyse est également de mettre en avant les injonctions contradictoires que subissent aujourd’hui les chercheurs en matière de publication et de diffusion de l’information scientifique et technique à travers entre autres les problématiques et questionnements liés à la brevetabilité des résultats de recherche financés sur des fonds publics.

URL : https://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_01716543

The scientific impact of nations on scientific and technological development

Authors : Aurelio Patelli, Giulio Cimini, Emanuele Pugliese, Andrea Gabrielli

Determining how scientific achievements influence the subsequent process of knowledge creation is a fundamental step in order to build a unified ecosystem for studying the dynamics of innovation and competitiveness.

Yet, relying separately on data about scientific production on one side, through bibliometric indicators, and about technological advancements on the other side, through patents statistics, gives only a limited insight on the key interplay between science and technology which, as a matter of fact, move forward together within the innovation space.

In this paper, using citation data of both scientific papers and patents, we quantify the direct impact of the scientific outputs of nations on further advancements in science and on the introduction of new technologies.

Our analysis highlights the presence of geo-cultural clusters of nations with similar innovation system features, and unveils the heterogeneous coupled dynamics of scientific and technological success.

This study represents a first step in the buildup of a comprehensive framework for knowledge creation and innovation.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.03768

The openness buzz in the knowledge economy: Towards taxonomy

Authors : Anna Lundgren, Hans Westlund

In the networked information and knowledge-based economy and society, the notions of ‘open’ and ‘openness’ are used in a variety of contexts; open source, open access, open economy, open government, open innovation – just to name a few.

This paper aims at discussing openness and developing a taxonomy that may be used to analyse the concept of openness. Are there different qualities of openness? How are these qualities interrelated?

What analytical tools may be used to understand openness? In this paper four qualities of openness recurrent in literature and debate are explored: accessibility, transparency, participation and sharing. To further analyse openness new institutional theory as interpreted by Williamson (2000) is used, encompassing four different institutional levels; cultural embeddedness, institutional environment, governance structure and resource allocations.

At what institutional levels is openness supported and/or constrained? Accessibility as a quality of openness seems to have a particularly strong relation to the other qualities of openness, whereas the notions of sharing and collaborative economics seem to be the most complex and contested quality of openness in the knowledge-based economy.

This research contributes to academia, policy and governance, as handling of challenges with regard to openness vs. closure in different contexts, territorial, institutional and/or organizational, demand not only a better understanding of the concept, but also tools for analysis.

URL : http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0263774X16671312