Arts, S., Fleming, L. & Veretennik, L. (2024)
Harnessing Academic Science for Corporate Technology: The Role of Interpersonal Networks and Brokers
If firms do less scientific research, and yet their innovation increasingly relies upon science, how do they gain access to scientific knowledge? To explore the role of interpersonal networks among corporate inventors and academic scientists in facilitating the transfer of scientific knowledge from academia to industry, we construct the collaboration network spanning all authors in PubMed and all inventors on U.S. patents. To isolate the influence of interpersonal networks from the inherent characteristics and commercial potential of scientific discoveries, we use paper twins − scientific papers with the same or nearly identical findings published around the same time by different academic teams − and analyze their citations in corporate patents. Although academic science is traditionally viewed as a public good, our findings underscore the critical role of interpersonal relationships in harnessing academic science for corporate innovation. Importantly, the ability of corporate inventors to leverage their interpersonal connections to academic scientists is fully contingent on their own active involvement in both scientific research and commercial technology development, particularly when this scientific research closely aligns with the academic insights they use for industrial applications.
First to Know, First to Invent: Social Proximity and Timing in Patent-Paper Citations
Companies that ground their inventions in cutting-edge science unlock greater value, quality, and market impact—and being first to harness new scientific insights lets them to extract higher private returns while temporarily locking out rivals. Yet, beyond the well-known roles of conferences or hiring star scientists, the precise social processes that bridge firms to emerging knowledge remain underexplored. We examine how social proximity between scientists and inventors shapes firms’ ability to translate scientific discoveries into patented innovations. Leveraging a novel dynamic collaboration network of 9 million PubMed authors and 2.5 million U.S. patent inventors (1975-2009), we introduce a shortest path social distance metric that captures pre-citation interpersonal channels. Merging this network with a large random sample of patent–paper citations (1,000,000 dyads), and using paper fixed effects, we isolate how social distance determines which firms cite new science first. We further test heterogeneity by research novelty, firm absorptive capacity, patent novelty. Our findings show (1) social proximity amplifies firms’ first-mover returns, (2) interpersonal ties can substitute for or complement traditional absorptive mechanisms, and (3) our large-scale proximity measure uncovers science–technology linkages invisible to citation-only analyses. These results highlight interpersonal networks as a critical lever for early access to frontier knowledge.
Veretennik, E. & Shakina, E. (2024)
Beyond borders: Achieving research performance breakthrough with academic collaborations
Higher Education Quarterly, 78(1), pp. 212-235.
This work, on behalf of Society For Research Into Higher Education, is among our top 10 most-cited papers published by the journal in 2023</br>
Collaborative research papers are widely acknowledged to be more impactful than single-authored studies in higher education amidst subject area known to alter citation counts. While preceding studies have mostly recognised these two as the antecedents of research impact separately, it needs to be clarified whether the interaction of research area and type of collaboration causes any moderation. Comprehensive knowledge of differences in impact caused by a certain combination of type and area is important because, if citation impact is associated only with a particular combination, the impact-based research stimulation programs without regard to combination consequences may be cost-ineffective if not self-destructing. This study investigates how research collaborations in academia impact the productivity and impact of university faculty. The focus is on the impact variation due to the type of academic collaboration (internal, domestic, international) and the research area. For the empirical test of this study, publicly open data from 1368 faculty in one of the leading Russian higher education institutions—HSE University. Results have two-fold nature. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) researchers are more likely to collaborate with domestic co-authors. This result accentuates the specifics of the academic traditions in the research areas highly recognised for having a long and successful history and worldwide impact on science. The collaborations built on international coauthorship are associated with higher publication visibility rates for researchers from emerging fields in Russia, like those in social sciences and humanities, whereas institutional collaborations are found to be positively related to the share of cited documents. This article sheds light on the differences in academic collaboration mechanisms influencing research productivity and impact in two distinct research areas. It invites revisiting policies stimulating collaborative activities in universities, demonstrating their potentially discrepant consequences. The study’s substantial contribution also refers to the use of panel data on personal attributes, research productivity and impact, which is a rare case for research collaboration studies.
Veretennik, E. & Okulova, O. (2023)
Of performance and impact: How AACSB accreditation contributes to research in business schools
Higher Education Policy, 36(4), pp. 758-780.
It is a general understanding that higher education has characteristics of an “experience good” because the quality cannot be determined before receiving the service, which induces information asymmetry. In response to reducing the asymmetry, external assessment tools like international accreditations have emerged in higher education, which is especially evident in the field of business and management research. Quality is an integral part of reputation and legitimisation, so business schools actively engage in the accreditation race. In order to ensure legitimacy in the higher education market, business schools pay special attention to their intellectual output. It is reflected in the development of academic policies designed to encourage publication activities. It is pivotal to analyse how international accreditations contribute to the research performance and impact of business schools. The results of the study provide evidence that AACSB accreditation contributes to the research performance, however, it does not contribute to increasing the impact of the papers. Since the signalling research-based reputation is important for business schools, the study places attention on further examination of determinants of impactful research as international accreditation only determines the growth of quantity not the quality.
Veretennik, E. & Yudkevich, M. (2023)
Inconsistent quality signals: Evidence from the regional journals
Scientometrics, 128(6), pp. 3675-3701.
Nowadays many countries and institutions use bibliometric assessment of journal quality in their research evaluation policies. However, bibliometric measures, such as impact factor or quartile, may provide a biased quality assessment for relatively new, regional, or non-mainstream journals, as these outlets usually do not possess a longstanding history, and may not be included into indexing databases. To reduce the information asymmetry between academic community (researchers, editors, policymakers) and journal management, we propose an alternative approach to evaluate journals quality signals using previous publication track record of authors. We explore the difference in the quality signals sent by regional journals. Traditional, journal-level, bibliometric measures are contrasted with generalised measures of authors’ publishing records. We used a set of 50,477 articles and reviews in 83 regional journals in Physics and Astronomy (2014–2019) to extract and process data on 73 866 authors and their additional 329,245 publications in other Scopus-indexed journals. We found that traditional journal-level measures (such as journal quartile, CiteScore percentile, Scimago Journal Rank) tend to under-evaluate journal quality, thus contributing to an image of low-quality research venues. Author-level measures (including the share of papers in the Nature Index journals) send positive signals of journal quality and allow us to subdivide regional journals by their publishing strategies. These results suggest that research evaluation policies might consider attributing greater weight to regional journals, not only for the training purposes of doctoral students but also for gaining international visibility and impact.
Karaseva, A., Gavrilova, K., Vasilyeva, V. & Veretennik, E. (2023)
E-procurement and Arctic infrastructural geography: Challenges of e-governance in the Russian Arctic
Polar Geography, 46(2-3), pp. 120-138.
Everyday life in the Arctic has become increasingly digitalized. The academic discussion around it focuses on three aspects: digital infrastructures and access; digital promises; and digitalization risks and challenges to human security. The existing critical research on e-governance in the Arctic has been done in the North American and European Arctic, while digital governance in the Russian Arctic has mostly remained beyond the scope of research. In this article, we aim to fill the gap by demonstrating how Russian Arctic infrastructural geography affects digital governance in the region. To achieve this goal, we used a mixed methods approach. First, to grasp the structural differences between Arctic and non-Arctic Russia, we analyzed open data from the Russian e-procurement system concerning the share of contracts with local suppliers, the percentage of terminated contracts, and indicators of contract time sensitivity. Second, to explore the mechanics of e-procurement in the Arctic, we gathered interviews with procurers working in state organizations in three remote settlements in different parts of the Russian Arctic: The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Krasnoyarsk Krai, and Arkhangelsk region. By combining these data, we produce a detailed picture of e-procurement across the differentiated Russian Arctic infrastructural geography.
Veretennik, E. & Kianto, A. (2020)
The impact of trust and innovation networks on teachers’ job satisfaction
Kybernetes, 49(1), pp. 200-228.
The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of how two types of informal social networks – those related to instrumental purposes of information sharing and those related to expressive purposes of interpersonal trust – impact teachers’ job satisfaction. This paper uses social network analysis (SNA) degree and betweenness measures and job satisfaction scales from the Job Diagnostic Survey to collect longitudinal data from employees in one of the vocational schools in Saint Petersburg, Russia via structured interviews. Data on a total of 354 ties were analysed for 40 ego networks in 2018 and 33 ego networks in 2019. The obtained results partially confirm the positive effect of teachers’ position in instrumental and expressive networks on job satisfaction. More centrally positioned teachers were more satisfied with peers and colleagues. They feel more secure in regard to job security, given the unique and multi-faceted knowledge they possess. Structural diversity of the network, as well as the category of a teacher (core subject or vocational subject), are found to explain the uneven evolvement of network size. The authors argue that the decrease in network size can be treated as a positive externality of changes in an informal network. The variation in teachers’ experience seems to explain both job satisfaction and network composition.This research extends the understanding of the role of different kinds of social networks in teachers’ job satisfaction. The paper provides new insights into the SNA application to vocational schools and developing economies. Authors address teachers’ informal networks both from ego and complete network analyses to provide the holistic, yet detailed view. The use of longitudinal data advances the understanding of how personal and group networks develop over time.
Pronin, A., Veretennik, E. & Semyonov, A. (2014)
Grouping University Students Using Social Network Analysis
Voprosy Obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow, 3(October), pp. 54-73.
2nd Place in a Competition of Young Scientistsʼ Research Papers of 2013
We have developed and tested a way to reorganize student groups using the Social Network Analysis (SNA) methodology. The problem defined by the administrators of the Faculty of Management at the National Research University - Higher School of Economics (Saint Petersburg) consisted in reorganizing four existing groups of second-year Bachelor’s students into three new groups. The fundamental requirement was to keep the friendly and collaborative relationships that had developed between students. Technical requirements included ensuring equal sizes of the new groups (26 students) and equivalent levels of academic performance (measured by the average semester grade). We present a solution algorithm which is based on SNA tools and includes two possible strategies for groups with different interaction patterns: 1) the weak link strategy (selecting the most fragmented student group that can be easily divided into loosely connected subgroups, breaking it down and distributing the clusters among the other three groups); and 2) the melting pot strategy (reorganizing all the four groups into entirely new clusters based on the degree of student interaction). A comparison of performance ranking scores achieved during the following 18 months revealed a growth of the average grade in groups reorganized with regard to interpersonal assessment and interaction. The suggested grouping method may be used to rearrange student groups or courses in situations where some students get dismissed or transferred, or with a view to create project teams for research classes or scientific labs.