Academic entrepreneurship: exploring the effects of academic patenting activity on publication and collaboration among heterogeneous researchers in South Korea

This paper examines the effects of academic patenting activity on academic publication and on collaboration between researchers in academia and researchers in industry or public research institutes. The study focuses on the case of South Korea, where university research rapidly evolved along with economic development, and where university-industry linkages are strongly encouraged by government policies. The study collected data on 632 full-time faculty members in the natural sciences, bio sciences, and engineering sciences at 46 Korean universities from the National Research Foundation of Korea and other statistical data sources. The results show that academic patenting complements publishing up to a certain level of patenting activity, but then replaces publishing. Academic patenting also is shown to have positive effects on research collaboration with industry and statistically non-significant effects on research collaboration with researchers at public research institutes. This study expands the analysis on the effects of patents on research collaboration among heterogeneous researchers as well as publications in South Korea.