The effect of university-industry collaboration on the scientific impact of publications: the Canadian case (1980-2005)

Previous research on university-industry collaboration in Canada concluded, using mean impact factors as a proxy, that the scientific impact of such research is not inferior to that of university research. Using field-normalized impact factors and citation counts, this paper reexamines the Canadian case. It shows that, when impact factors are field-normalized, university-industry papers are published, on average, in journals with lower impact factors than papers originating from universities only. However, field-normalized citation values reveal the opposite: the average scientific impact of university-industry papers is significantly above that of both university-only papers and industry-only papers. Collaboration with industries is, thus far from detrimental to the scientific impact of university research and even increases it significantly. Introduction Collaboration in scientific research is generally regarded as being something positive which must be encouraged (Katz and Martin, 1997). Many efforts are thus made, generally in the form of governmental or institutional policies, to reinforce all kinds of collaborations. Several initiatives also aim at fostering collaboration between various organizations active in research—particularly universities and industries—in order to integrate potential users of research as early as possible into the research process (OECD, 1999). Along the same lines, Gibbons et al. (1994) and Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz (1996) suggest that the organization of scientific research is changing and that, in contemporary societies, knowledge is more and more produced in collaboration between universities and industries. This paper aims at studying, with bibliometric data and methods, the scientific impact of research performed by university researchers working in collaboration with industry. Several bibliometric studies have been published so far on university-industry collaboration. They generally come to the conclusion that these university-industry collaborations are advantageous to the two partners; the most tangible benefit for industry is a faster access to the new discoveries of universities, whereas in return, university researchers have access to equipment, research funds and an external viewpoint on their own works (Lee, 1997). At the individual level, Lee and Bozeman (2005) showed that US researchers who collaborate—all types of collaboration included—are generally more productive in terms of publications than researchers working alone. Although they represent a small percentage of collaborative activities, university-industry collaborations