Diversified resources and academic influence: patterns of university–industry collaboration in Chinese research-oriented universities

Abstract

This paper investigates the scope and patterns of university---industry collaborations (UICs) in Chinese research-oriented universities. Based on the co-authored publications in international journals by Chinese universities' academics and researchers from industries with the method of bibliometric and latent cluster analysis, this study provides detailed results on the characters and clustering features from two aspects, namely diversified resources and academic influence. The results show that, although the co-authored publications with industrial researchers only account for a small part of all publications of Chinese universities, the importance of cooperation with industries in the academic research and the scientific contribution have been strengthened in China. Meanwhile, the academic influence of co-authored publications is periodically improving, but still in the development stage of quantity rather than quality. The analyses demonstrate that there are significant differences in the matching relationship of diversified resources and academic influence between universities. Only few UICs are in both the high level of diversified resources and strong academic influence. Most of UICs should attempt to maintain diversified resources advantages whilst also try to enhance academic influence of cooperation outcomes.