Uncovering university-industry collaboration: a milestone towards successful unexplored and research areas

Abstract

Research collaboration between the private sector and academia is one of the core aspects to solve complex problems through science, technology and innovation. Despite this societal relevance, we still lack insights about the research topics in which both sectors intersect their agendas, particularly in middle-low-income regions. To shed light on this question, Julián D. Cortés, chaired professor at Woxsen University, applied bibliometric techniques to a sample of 13,000+ research articles and 500,000+ references to determine the research fronts in which research institutions based in Latin America and the Caribbean collaborated with knowledge-intensive companies. Fields of strategic importance for both sectors were computer science applications, genetics, health, public health, environmental and occupational health and strategy and management. Also, the author identified several unexplored research fronts, particularly in health (e.g. care planning) and the social sciences and humanities (e.g. demography).