Perceptions of engineering faculty members regarding research collaborations

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to connect the perceptions and understanding of the collaboration of faculty members of NIRF ranked top-performing engineering institutes with the publication they have. The quantitative bibliometric analysis along with the enquiry with authors show that national collaboration, mainly with academic authors of same or other institution, still is a preferred. Despite international collaboration leading to more average citations, there is no significant gain seen. Scholars collaborate for many reasons, but mostly to gain popularity among peers or to receive citation benefits. Collaboration with private or government organizations, although uncommon, is primarily used to test newly developed ideas or to provide consultancy. Most of the respondents believe that funding is important for research collaborations and low commitment of team members to the shared goal is a major barrier in collaboration. We argue that as the share of University-Industry-Government research collaborations is low, a strong congruence between knowledge capital and entrepreneurial capital is needed to develop an entrepreneurial university.