Fiction lagging behind or non-fiction defending the indefensible? University–industry (et al.) interaction in science fiction

A review of Optical Point-of-Care devices to Estimate the Technology Transfer of These Cutting-Edge Technologies

Despite the remarkable development related to Point-of-Care devices based on optical technology, their difficulties when used outside of research laboratories are notable. In this sense, it would be interesting to ask ourselves what the degree of transferability of the research work to the market is, for example, by analysing the relation between the scientific work developed and the registered one, through patent. In this work, we provide an overview of the state-of-the-art in the sector of optical Point-of-Care devices, not only in the research area but also regarding their transfer to market. To this end, we explored a methodology for searching articles and patents to obtain an indicator that relates to both. This figure of merit to estimate this transfer is based on classifying the relevant research articles in the area and the patents that have been generated from these ones. To delimit the scope of this study, we researched the results of a large enough number of publications in the period from 2015 to 2020, by using keywords "biosensor", "optic", and "device" to obtain the most representative articles from Web of Science and Scopus. Then, we classified them according to a particular classification of the optical PoC devices. Once we had this sampling frame, we defined a patent search strategy to cross-link the article with a registered patent (by surfing Google Patents) and classified them accordingly to the categories described. Finally, we proposed a relative figure called Index of Technology Transference (IoTT), which estimates to what extent our findings in science materialized in published articles are protected by patent.

Academic artists’ engagement and commercialisation

Academic artists are researchers who create artistic work. They form part of the cultural life of cities and contribute to welfare not only through research but also through art. They may commercialise their art or use it to engage in scientific knowledge diffusion. We seek to understand the relationship between art, academic commercialisation and engagement, and detect barriers to academic art. The resources needed to develop and diffuse art in addition to conducting research may be incompatible with a career focused on science quality or an organisational logic based on teaching and pure basic research. We study the responses to a survey of some 7,000 Spanish academics and compare university researchers to other researchers. More than half of the researchers surveyed create artistic work; however, whereas engagement is the norm rather than the exception, commercialisation is rare. Working in a university and producing good quality science run counter to being an artist. The detrimental effect of science quality on being a commercial or engaged artist turns positive after a certain threshold, which suggests polarisation among academic artists. Among commercial artists, this polarisation seems to apply specifically to university researchers. We discuss the implications for the valorisation of art across knowledge transfer channels and in research evaluations.