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An invisible revolution, known as the third mission, is claimed to be occurring within universities. Accordingly, the canonical missions associated with research and teaching have been integrated with the one aimed at territorial development. But do all universities conceive the third mission in the same way? This paper tries to elucidate which organizational orientations emerge by classifying the espoused values embedded within the statutes of 75 Italian universities. Using a qualitative content analysis, we highlighted four orientation patterns: first, need for coherence, focused on balancing public functions and third-mission activities; second, exploitation, focused on patent disclosure; third, openness, readiness to participate in external change and to satisfy external needs; and finally, old school, focused on entrepreneurial activities as a source of funding. This classification shows a more complex phenomenon for the institutionalization of the third mission with respect to a simple binary public-private opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the determinants of professors' career advancement in Italian universities. From the analyses, it emerges that the fundamental determinant of an academic candidate's success is not scientific merit, but rather the number of years that the candidate has belonged to the same university as the president of the selection committee. Where applicants have participated in research work with the president, their probability of success also increases significantly. The factors of the years of service and occurrence of joint research with other members of the commission also have an effect, however, that carries less weight. Nepotism, although it exists, seems less important. The scientific quality of the members of the commission has a negligible effect on the expected outcome of the competition, and even less so the geographical location of the university holding the competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, many disciplines have dealt with the relationship between scientific research and policy-making, and many different models for science-policy interactions have been proposed. This paper aims to investigate the models of science-policy interaction implicitly or explicitly adopted by stakeholders, by means of a Delphi study performed with Italian researchers, politicians, doctors and journalists. The study was developed within the framework of the European project on Research into Policy to Enhance Physical Activity, which aimed to improve evidence-informed policy-making using the field of physical activity as the case study. Our results show the persistence of the traditional linear model and how it coexists with subsequent models in the same individual visions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the impact of the second national research assessment (VQR 2004–10), which was performed in 2011 by the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes, on publication strategies by sociologists in Italy. We reconstructed all publications from Italian sociologists in Scopus between 2006 and 2015, that is five years before and after the assessment. We also checked academic tenure and promotions during the assessment. Our results showed the potentially distortive effect of institutional signals on publications given that Italian sociologists published more in journals that were considered influential for assessment, some, however, being of doubtful quality. Our findings would suggest that the use of informed peer review and ad hoc journal ranking could stimulate adaptive responses based on strategic journal targeting to ensure publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to highlight the dynamics underlying Italian researchers' migration patterns over the last decade. Building on data gathered through an international study (MORE 3), the analysis focuses on identifying perceptions of working conditions, career prospect and confidence in the national Research and Innovation (R&I) system by Italian researchers in Italy and abroad. It provides a comparative assessment of researchers' satisfaction with regards to their R&I environment in and outside Italy, across different fields of study and career stages. Results show that Italian researchers working abroad have a faster career progression than researchers in the Italian system and provide evidence of a low confidence of Italian researchers regarding career prospect in their own country. These findings are interpreted as major determinants of the decision to emigrate and develop an academic career abroad. Implications for future science policy in Italy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of academics in patenting activity is not limited to patents owned by universities (universityowned patents) as academics often contribute to inventions patented by other organizations (university- invented patents). Moreover, it has been shown that academics play central roles inside the patenting network and that appropriability rules can interfere with the pattern of knowledge diffusion. In this study, we use social network analysis to analyze university-owned and university-invented patents in two Italian universities. We investigate the quality of the ties and the reasons why academics patent with their universities or with external organizations. We identify three subnetwork typologies. Two out of three subnetworks well exemplify the conditions for university ownership and for professor privilege, but the most complex structure, stemming fromacademic gatekeepers, needmore flexible property attribution arrangements. In this contexts, aggressive policies toward university ownership can damage the networkswith the highest grade of science-industry cross-fertilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]