Differential Attainment Within the Specialised Foundation Programme: Creating an Accessible Mentorship Scheme to Increase Diversity Within Academic Medicine

The Specialised Foundation Programme (SFP), formerly the Academic Foundation Programme, is a highly competitive pathway into academic medicine. There is minimal information available on the demographics of those who apply to the programme, how it scores its applicants and who is successful, making it difficult to assess whether the application process is accessible to all students and promotes a diverse workforce. There are varying levels of support available with coaching, either geographically ring-fenced by universities or available through paid courses. As a result, there is a risk of differential attainment between students who have financial constraints or attend universities where the SFP is less promoted. The aim of the study was to assess student opinion on barriers to the SFP and academic medicine and the demand for the creation of a national, free-to-access SFP mentorship programme to reduce differential attainment amongst student cohorts. Students in the programme received mentorship, peer learning and scheduled teaching events over a six-month period. Surveys were distributed pre- and post-course, and qualitative and quantitative analysis was conducted. Of the respondents, 76% felt that medical schools provided insufficient information on SFP, 31% did not feel financially stable at university and 53% stated that they would not enrol if a cost was present. Applicants were tested on pre- and post-course confidence, all of which showed an increase in mean Likert (1-5) scoring post-mentorship. Financial, institutional and geographical barriers to students applying to the programme were identified. Whilst further research is required to better understand the barriers to academic medicine, national, free-to-access mentorship may effectively reduce differential attainment and improve accessibility amongst students.

Do development zones increase carbon emission performance of China's cities?

As a special industrial cluster policy, "development zones" (DZs) represent the growth poles of the regions in which they are located; in China, they fulfill the dual tasks of industrial upgrading and green transformation. While the existing literature has paid close attention to the economic effects of development zones, few efforts have been made to examine their climate effects. Therefore, in the context of China's efforts to achieve "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality", this paper for the first time provides evidence of the effect of development zones on urban carbon emission performance; it does this by constructing a difference-in-difference (DID) model, which is based on panel data for Chinese cities in the period 1997-2017. The findings of the study indicate that the establishment of development zones had a positive influence on urban carbon emission performance without time lag effects. Our heterogeneity analysis of city groups indicated that development zones located in eastern region, or in large or coastal cities, exerted a more significant impact. The mechanism analysis that we conducted demonstrates that development zones promote carbon emissions performance by increasing GDP and reducing carbon emissions. Finally, this paper puts forward a series of policy measures, which are intended to strengthen the environmental benefit of development zones within the context of an urban green transition.

Industry-research fronts – Private sector collaboration with research institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean

In which research fields is industry involved with research institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)? To shed light on this question, we applied bibliographic coupling to 13,000+ research articles and 500,000+ references indexed in Scopus for 1996–2021 as a means of determining the research fronts in which LAC-based research institutions collaborated with knowledge-intensive companies. Fields with higher betweenness centrality were those multidisciplinary, followed by physical (e.g. computer science applications), life (e.g. genetics), health (e.g. public health, environmental and occupational health) and social sciences and humanities (e.g. strategy and management). Furthermore, the period-by-period analysis unveiled a focused venturing into the physical sciences from 1996 to 2002. However, from the 2003–2021 periods, the new fields explored were mainly in the social sciences and humanities. Finally, we identified several unexplored research fronts, particularly in health (e.g. care planning) and the social sciences and humanities (e.g. demography).

Research Topic Specialization of Universities in Information Science and Library Science and Its Impact on Inter-University Collaboration

Universities significantly empower the development of science and technology, and inter-university research collaborations have been one of the major approaches. Considering each university has its expertise regarding research topics in a given discipline, the present paper examines the specialization of university research and its impact on inter-university collaborations. Based on a keyword network constructed via research articles in Information Science and Library Science, 10 research topics are identified. Accordingly, the research topic diversity of a university and the research topic similarity between two universities are quantified. The universities with diverse research topics are found to be more collaborative. A further collaboration network analysis based on the Quadradic Assignment Procedure reveals the important role of research topic similarity on the closeness and impact of collaborations. The different research topic specializations largely prevent close collaborations between two universities, but on the other hand, have the potential to form a complementary combination of knowledge leading to more impactful research output. The analysis and results highlight the important role of research topic specialization and provide insights for the university- or department-level strategy for research collaborations.

A Systematic Literature Review of Partnership Development at the University–Industry–Government Nexus

The increasingly entrepreneurial intent of universities implies the commercialization of knowledge and innovation through the triple helix of interactions between universities, industry and government. However, there remains a lack of clarity concerning best practice partnerships for innovation. This systematic literature review (SLR) provides insights onto the development of partnerships at the university–industry–government nexus and builds on the existing top-down/bottom-up approach for the creation of intermediaries of innovation. The SLR describes the evolution of these intermediaries, which is driven both by criteria set by partners and the globalization of the knowledge economy. This SLR reveals that the partnership structure most likely to further economic and broader societal goals is the living lab with the inherent focus on open innovation and co-creation. This SLR reveals that the living lab structure (and including sustainability labs and urban living labs) is the partnership structure utilized for innovation that addresses economic, social and environmental goals. Two areas are recommended for further research. One concerns the development of a deeper understanding of the relationship between the evolution in the structures of partnerships for innovation and how it is influenced by the globalization of the economy, society and environment, and changing modes of knowledge production. The other is to better understand why the living lab approach to partnership creation is best suited to the delivery of sustainable development objectives and how this learning can be applied to other models of partnership development at the university–industry–government nexus.

The effects of National High-tech Industrial Development Zones on economic development and environmental pollution in China during 2003-2018

Utilizing National High-tech Industrial Development Zones (NHIDZs) as a quasi-natural experiment, this study has adopted 285 prefecture and above cities from 2003 to 2018 in China as the research samples and constructed the difference-in-differences (DID) and spatial difference-in-differences (SDID) models to investigate the effects of NHIDZs on economic development and environmental pollution at national, regional, and administrative levels. The results show that NHIDZs have basically achieved a win-win situation in promoting economic development and reducing environmental pollution at the national level. However, spatial heterogeneity is supported at regional and administrative levels. Specifically, "the law of diminishing marginal effect" of NHIDZs is proved in the eastern cities and key cities, which reveals the uneven development pattern of government leading in China, and highlights the importance and necessary of making policy according to local conditions and governing environmental pollution by classification.