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Collaboration strategies and effects on university research: evidence from Chinese universities

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Abstract

Previous studies have provided inconsistent evidence pertaining to the relationship between university–industry collaboration and university performance. This study’s objective is to go beyond traditional viewpoints, which mostly confine university–industry collaboration within a separate channel, to build the relationship between university–industry collaboration overall channel characteristics and university research performance. In doing so, we define two collaboration strategies, collaboration breadth, which is the scope of different channels, and collaboration depth, which is the extent that universities deepen into different channels. Based on a comprehensive panel dataset of Chinese universities in mainland China in 2009–2013, we find that collaboration breadth and collaboration depth have a linear and curvilinear effect on academic research performance, respectively. Moreover, the interaction of collaboration breadth and depth shows a negative impact on academic research performance.

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Notes

  1. There are inconsistent terms used to capture interactions between university and industry, such as collaboration, relation, relationship, knowledge/technology transfer, university engagement and university commercialization, university–industry links, science-technology interface, and others. There might be various reasons for their interpretations of a university–industry link, and, consequently, different terms are used. In this study, we will not differentiate between these different terms because channels under our examination include different aspects of university–industry collaboration, which is difficult to combine into one single term.

  2. East China includes Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Liaoning, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong, Guangdong and Hainan; Middle China includes Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Shanxi, Jilin and Heilongjiang; and West China includes Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu and Guangxi.

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  1. Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

    Yuandi Wang, Die Hu, Weiping Li, Yiwei Li & Qiang Li

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  1. Yuandi Wang
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Wang, Y., Hu, D., Li, W. et al. Collaboration strategies and effects on university research: evidence from Chinese universities. Scientometrics 103, 725–749 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1552-3

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