Benchmarking university-industry research cooperation worldwide: performance measurements and indicators based on co-authorship data for the world's largest universities

Surprisingly, there is still no comparative information as to which universities are among the world's major providers of science-based information and services to the business sector in general, and research-active industry in particular. This paper presents the first results of statistical analyses to help fill this information gap. Our case study of university-industry research cooperation patterns deals with the world's 350 largest research universities. The statistical data were derived from university-industry co-authored research publications (UICs) that were published during the years 2002–2006 and jointly authored by university researchers and staff employed by business enterprises. The results reveal a host of organizational variables that are likely to determine a university's UIC performance. The various UIC rankings highlight measurement issues and reveal significant differences depending on which UIC indicator is selected for comparison. We conclude that these UICs offer an interesting new source of empirical data for domestic and international comparisons of research universities but, pending further validation studies, university-level UIC statistics should preferably be used only within non-evaluative multi-dimensional benchmarking frameworks rather than for university league tables.