Consideration of Knowledge and Technology Transfer Characteristics for Research Evaluation

Knowledge and Technology Transfer (KTT) is currently becoming the third mission for the scientific community in addition to research and education. Therefore, there is a growing need to evaluate the impact of KTT, both directly and indirectly, on industry and society. However, despite the growing importance of KTT and the considerable amount of research that has already been conducted in this field, existing approaches to research evaluation primarily focus on quantitative determinants (e.g., number of publications, patents and licenses, number of collaboration projects with industry, or of companies founded) thereby neglecting transfer-oriented aspects of research evaluation. Therefore, in this article we investigate the characteristics of KTT, and to what extent they are taken into account by existing research evaluation approaches. Our results confirm that, up until now, KTT has been infrequently considered as an approach toward the evaluation of current research. Existing evaluation approaches focus on quantitative determinants, but to some extent they fail to realize that those determinants are not equally appropriate for evaluating KTT in different scientific disciplines or traditions. Based on our results, we call for more integrative and systematic research, building a foundation to meet the requirements of the growing importance of KTT in research evaluation.