Conceptualizing academic intellectual capital: definition and proposal of a measurement scale

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and validation of an instrument for measuring intellectual capital in the academic research context. The current research context describes a new paradigm of scientific production characterized by interdisciplinarity, heterogeneity and the intensification of the relations between the generators of knowledge. In this scenario, traditional measures of intellectual capital do not capture all the variables that make up the environment in which the research activities are carried out. This transformation of research processes suggests the need to bring theories of organizational behavior, more appropriate to an organizational context, to the study of scientific context. Thus, the paper contextualizes the intellectual capital approach, thereby explaining how the different attributes that build it influence scientific productivity and providing a measurement instrument to evaluate relative levels of intellectual capital in an academic research context. Design/methodology/approach The scale was designed through a double qualitative–quantitative scale development process. The literature on intellectual capital does not provide strong theoretical support for the definition of a specific set of items to be applied in the specific academic research context. Consequently, the scale constructs and observable variables were initially conceptualized through a Delphi panel. This initial set of indicators was empirically validated through a second quantitative stage to a sample of 1,798 Spanish academics. Given that no prior published studies have examined the construct validity of the proposed scale, and the proposed scale is not based on other previously validated scales, the authors used exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to assess the internal consistency, using Cronbach’s α to determine reliability. Findings Drawing on the evidence obtained from a double qualitative–quantitative process, a scale consisting of 47 items was proposed to measure the three dimensions of intellectual capital, namely, the researcher’s human capital, as well as the nature of the social capital and organizational capital of the team in which the scholar is integrated. The process of identifying and validating indicators of intellectual capital allowed the authors to identify certain intangible elements that are key in the research process and that, therefore, determine scientific productivity. Thus, the proposed scale co