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1 Context The success of science, technology, and innovation (STI) programs depend on the contributions of researchers, their networks and interactions with policymakers and implementers. Despite this recognition, the literature on STI policy retains a top-down focus. A bottom-up perspective is needed to appreciate how the research community responds to a given policy or program and the influence of the research environment. We argue that STI policies should be evaluated in the broader contex...

Profound transformations are affecting the research systems around the world. We witness the emergence of new or restructured organizations to steer public research or promote innovation, new programmatic directions within these organizations, increased funding dedicated to research in academic settings, and new domestic and international partnerships and collaborations. A multiplicity of organizations and funding sources have appeared, creating a complex web where resources circulate along with knowledge in ways that are reshaping research systems in the South. This book gathers a large sample of these changes presented during a symposium organized by IDRC, IRD, IFRIS, and OECD, seeking to better understand their institutional, political and economic drivers. These cases document the building of scientific capacity and the broader use of results from scientific research and presents lessons for public policy. A large variety of case studies of specific research organizations and comparative analysis of the wider research system are presented in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

El artículo presenta un panorama general del patentamiento que realizan las Universidades en Colombia. Para ello, se realiza un análisis de la información de la base de datos de patentes de la Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio de Colombia desde 1970 hasta 2010. Los resultados permiten observar el estado real del patentamiento Universitario en Colombia, así como identificar las Universidades más exitosas en el proceso de patentamiento y los tiempos reales requeridos para proteger las nuevas creaciones. Así mismo, los resultados son un insumo importante en la determinación de la estrategia de protección que adopten las Universidades Colombianas en cuanto a la protección de sus creaciones. The article presents an overview of university patenting in Colombia. For this propose, we analyze the information about patents, utility models and industrial designs at the Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio's patent database from 1970 to 2010. The results show the real state of university patenting in Colombia, and identify the most successful universities in the patenting process and the actual times required to protect new creations. The results are an important input in determining the protection strategy Colombian Universities should pursue regarding the protection of their new creations.

International audience; Purpose – Through the Mediator Agents of Knowledge (MAK) analytical lens, this paper shows the role played by some of the research groups of Los Andes University in the context of metropolitan area of Bogotá. The question is: which of these groups are, could be or could become MAK? Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses the ISI-Thomson and SCOPUS citation index to classified and select Los Andes research groups more visible within international communities. Each one of the selected groups is studied and all of them are systematized in order to find regularities vis-à-vis MAK notion. Findings – One type of group acts in certain way as a mediator agent, because of the role they play, not only on the global scenario, but particularly because the role its director plays as inter-actor coordinator among institutions in Bogotá. This Glo/cal role could be partly explained by the characteristic sector where this kind of group develops its research activity: ‘mediate sector complexity' (Sorenson 2006). Practical implications – The traditional findings accepted from learning region and territorial innovation system approaches are in question on the recently knowledge economy conditions. The global scenario where the research groups develop their activity is signed recently by functionally links instead of geographical proximity. Those approaches could apply only in some kind of sectors, where nowadays, the agglomeration condition of a city and the interdisciplinary networks of knowledge still play a complementary interaction.

This chapter explores how university research groups (URG) deal with the requirements of their practices while facing gaps left by on the one hand discrepancies between discourse and actual science, technology and innovation (STI) instruments and, on the other, coordination problems amongst STI policy instruments as implemented through various programmes and governance levels. In so doing, we study cases of research groups in nanotechnologies and biomedical engineering in Colombia, where we conducted semi-structured interviews, stakeholder dialogues in the framework of participatory workshops and collected information about URG activities and strategies. The results show how such groups, and particularly their leaders and their home institutions, adapt to different STI policy discourse and instrument gaps to support their practices, while maneuvering through inconsistencies and incompatibilities characterizing them. Through this process, URG become active players in the construction of such STI policies by acting as ‘jugglers’ that articulate various STI policy contexts, instruments and discourses simultaneously, in their effort to continue working on their research activities. This work contributes to the understanding of the rationales and dynamics of STI policy implementation from a bottom up perspective, by looking at the actions and learnings and strategies of the involved players.

Open Access (OA) as a movement has been steadily gaining strength for roughly the last two decades. As this happens, new actors, policies and tools have emerged to support this movement, composing what could be seen as an Open Access Ecosystem (OAE). However, the literature is still surprisingly scarce on the elements, structure and relationships among the components of the actual OAE. For this reason, we review the literature on the subject in order to attain a proposal of what this OAE is at present. After reviewing the literature, we propose the OAE includes three main components: Actors, Technology, and Regulatory Framework. For each of these components, we define the elements included in each one of them, and give examples that emerge from the review of the literature on OA-related research. We propose that elucidating the actual OAE could support policy-makers, as well as the OA community, to better understand the complexity of the Ecosystem and define ways to improve its functioning.