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Gender disparities in science have become a salient concern for policy makers and researchers. Previous studies have documented a gender gap in research productivity and recognition in the sciences, and different reasons for this gap have been proposed. In this study, we examine four academic fields with different proportions of men and women in their population. We address the following questions: What is the relationship between the gendered make-up of a field and the productivity and recognition of men and women scientists in that academic field? What is the relationship between the publication patterns of men and women in different academic fields and their productivity and recognition? We find that gendered patterns of productivity and recognition favour men in man-dominated subfields (Mathematical Physics and Software Engineering), while women were more productive and highly cited in one woman-dominated subfield (Nursing), though not in another (Psychology). Nursing, a woman-gendered field, provides an interesting counterpoint to the most usual findings regarding gender disparities in academia. Our findings highlight the need to disaggregate academic fields and to bring to the forefront other disciplines that remain under investigated in analyses of gender gaps to potentially elucidate conflicting findings in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing attention to science diplomacy among scholars, policymakers, and scientific associations around the world. However, there continues to be contestation around the concept of science diplomacy, currently framed alternately as a new understanding of diplomacy, part of the global challenges discourse, central to the internationalization of science, and typifying competitive innovation. This contestation is furthered by the involvement of a broad array of policy instruments and actors in science diplomacy. In response, this paper focuses on a single policy instrument, examining eight bilateral and multilateral scientific cooperation agreements led by Canada, India, Norway, and the United Kingdom. Kingdon's multiple streams framework is employed to explain how the interplay between policy actors, the policy agenda, policy problems, and policy alternatives leads to the creation of science diplomacy policies. Across the cases, all of the current science diplomacy discourses were applicable, holding stronger explanatory power in the problem and policy streams of the policy process while not obviously matching processes seen in the political stream. The findings also identified a gap in the current framing in understanding how geopolitical dynamics impact the creation of science diplomacy policies and how different policy actors negotiate, exploit, or are subject to these forces. By stabilizing one element of the ongoing debates around science diplomacy, the paper contributes a deeper examination of the array of policy actors and their involvement in different stages of the policy process leading to the formation of scientific cooperation agreements as tools of science diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the stated roles and qualifications of Canadian university presidents and provosts have evolved over the past thirty years and the growing presence of recruiting firms. The study analysed 153 job advertisements published by 22 universities between 1987 and 2017. Roles were categorized according to aspects of organizational life: human resource, political, structural, and symbolic, while we distinguished qualifications as involving traits as well as cultural, human, and social "capitals." Overall, the expected qualifications for presidential and provostial candidates have increased consistently and their roles have expanded in scope. Trait qualifications and symbolic roles, while mostly absent in 1987, became prevalent by 2017, suggesting a slow but clear shift towards managerialist and charismatic depictions of leadership. This increase took place concurrently with universities' increasing reliance on recruiting firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study builds upon the literature documenting gender disparities in science by investigating research productivity and recognition among elite scientists in three countries. This analysis departs from both the general comparison of researchers across organizational settings and academic appointments on one hand, and the definition of "elite" by the research outcome variables on the other, which are common in previous studies. Instead, this paper's approach considers the stratification of scientific careers by carefully constructing matched samples of men and women holding research chairs in Canada, the United States and South Africa, along with a control group of departmental peers. The analysis is based on a unique, hand-curated dataset including 943 researchers, which allows for a systematic comparison of successful scientists vetted through similar selection mechanisms. Our results show that even among elite scientists a pattern of stratified productivity and recognition by gender remains, with more prominent gaps in recognition. Our results point to the need for gender equity initiatives in science policy to critically examine assessment criteria and evaluation mechanisms to emphasize multiple expressions of research excellence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of an innovation agenda in science policy, previous studies have identified a shift in how the state delegates responsibility to funding agencies in order to change the behaviour of the scientific community. This paper contributes to this literature through a micro-level study of how one of Canada's largest research funding agencies, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), has changed resource allocation for research over 25 years. Our study foregrounds research funding agencies as key sites for examining the reconfiguration of the relationship between the state and science, as expressed in programmatic and resource allocation decisions. Through analysis of an original dataset compiled from NSERC's funding and documentary data, we demonstrate the relationship between the introduction of innovation objectives in funding instruments, the adoption of new delegation modes to guide resource allocation, and changes in funding among research fields over time. Our study empirically demonstrates the cumulative effect of programmatic and funding decisions in a major agency, going beyond previous accounts of more general trends at the national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New institutionalism predicts a global convergence in how higher education is organized. This convergence might be expected to intensify in professional education given accreditation requirements of professional bodies. Engineering presents an opportunity to study how international mobility agreements facilitate the development and normative diffusion of global norms in accreditation. This paper investigates how changing logics of accreditation influence the academic organization of engineering schools in Canada. Using three case studies of Canadian universities, we show how regulative and normative institutional pressures influence decisions by engineering schools to take visible action to demonstrate their conformity to global norms, while still pursuing local missions. Our findings contribute to understanding the complex mediation processes between professions and universities, and they represent a critique to dominant rationalist perspectives on quality assurance mechanisms in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada's research policy over the past three decades has steered national science toward industrial innovation. Yet, the outcomes of this policy orientation are debatable. Macro-level indicators continue to show weak performance in firm innovation, and there is also evidence that this policy stance has had material effects on science at the meso and micro levels. If so much public investment has gone into harnessing university–industry collaborations for a substantial period of time, why has Canada not seen an uptick in innovative activity? To address this puzzle, we turned our gaze to the policy machinery that promotes academic–industrial collaboration. We carried out case studies of two long-standing federal programs supporting research and development activities between universities and industry. Both programs are administered by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Canada's largest funder of natural sciences and engineering research. Drawing from multiple sources of data, we find that underneath the apparently successful implementation of these programs lies a misalignment between micro- and meso-level incentives for collaboration, and macro-level policy goals related to technological innovation and economic renewal. Our article makes two main contributions. First, it calls into question the escalating federal investments in university–industry partnership programs, as long as their ability to meet operational milestones remains the main source of evaluation. Second, it demonstrates the relevance and need for the literature to go beyond a focus on narrow technical questions at the micro level, and address broader questions about the purpose, goals, and beneficiaries of university–industry collaboration policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of corporate management tools in universities has been widely critiqued in recent decades, as it is viewed as undermining academic goals and promoting marketization and corporatization. Responsibility center budgeting (RCB) is one popular management tool that has been decried as promoting market logics, internal competition and institutional fragmentation. This comparative case study investigated four North American universities that employed RCB for several years, to investigate the relationship between unit autonomy and coordination. Site visits and interviews with key informants were conducted at the four universities, supplemented by document analysis. The analysis identifies widely different experiences between two sets of universities. Findings show that the ability of the central administration to promote vertical coordination is critical to mitigating the adverse consequences of RCB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the number of globally mobile students has expanded, governments are assumed to be consistently and intentionally competing for talent, in what has been called a 'great brain race'. While the notion of competition has become dominant, there is little evidence on long-term policy dynamics in this field, not only across jurisdictions but also over time. We seek to address this gap in this paper through a longitudinal analysis of the politics and public policies impacting international students in four major recruiting countries-Australia, Canada, England and the USA. Through this comparative analysis of the period 2000 to 2016, we demonstrate that international student numbers across the jurisdictions have grown steadily but that this appears to be decoupled from political and policy changes. We also discuss how 'internationalization' initiatives provide an insufficient policy umbrella for policy action on the recruitment and retention of international students. Public policy impacting international students spans multiple government agencies or ministries, encompassing different policy fields. This requires greater policy coordination, which remains elusive for the most part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supporters of open data believe that free and complete access to research data is beneficial for science, public policy, and society. In environmental science and policy, open data systems can enable relevant research and inform evidence-based governmental decisions. This article examines the unlikely case of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research's transition toward an open data model. Considering Brazil's young democracy, incipient practice of government transparency and accountability, and lacking a tradition of science-policy dialogue, this case is a striking example of how open data can support public debate by making information about forest cover widely available. The case shows the benefits and challenges of developing such open data systems, and highlights the various forms of accessibility involved in making data available to the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canadian universities are perceived as less vibrant and engaged generators of technologies with commercial value than their American counterparts, and such perceptions have driven science policy for decades. This paper shows that contrary to these prevailing views, Canada's largest university has a long history of experience in dealing with the technological gaps in national industry and in attempting to work with domestic firms. Three historical periods, particularly critical in shaping these interactions, are identified and discussed. By the time policy initiatives began emphasizing university-industry relationships, the university had already built essential organizational underpinnings for the commercialization of technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the use of university technology transfer reporting standards developed under the aegis of the US-based Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) in Canada. Given the importance to policy-makers internationally of improving the contributions of universities in transferring technology to industry, these indicators are regarded as critical to informing the policy debate. We analyze federal science and technology policy and identify how these metrics have influenced the framing of policy problems and alternatives. Next, a micro-level analysis of Canada's largest research university unveils several major weaknesses of the survey. Our study points to the need for a more critical use of the AUTM licensing data in the Canadian policy debate, and provides recommendations on the future development of these indicators and their use in public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite advances in research-informed public policy, research remains underutilized in government. To develop a firmer understanding of governmental capacity to use research in decision making, we investigate Canadian provincial ministries overseeing education, higher education, and science and technology. The findings from semi-structured interviews indicate that capacity to generate and access research is limited. However, we find evidence of a recent change in which provincial agencies sought to bolster capacity with research use strategies and by leveraging relationships with researchers. Leaders' support for well-coordinated research use initiatives also seems critical to instilling a culture of research-informed decision making in government agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decreasing government funding and regulated tuition policies have created a financially constrained environment for Canada’s universities. The conventional response to such conditions is to cut programme offerings and services in an attempt to lower costs throughout the institution. However, we argue that three Canadian universities have reacted with a different response. Instead of cutting costs, the University of Toronto, Queen’s University and the University of Lethbridge have chosen to implement decentralized budgeting and management structures in an attempt to increase efficiency and seek out new revenues. Using interview data and document analysis, this paper discusses the responses of these institutions and what they tell us about the strategies universities employ to cope with financial challenges that are likely to persist. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mutual learning exercises have become increasingly employed in Europe over the last decade. This study examines the policy learning process in the area of internationalization of science and technology, which has been targeted as a priority for Europe. Through a case study of the open method of coordination expert group in this area, the analysis identifies policy learning drivers, mechanisms and outcomes operating at multiple levels, from individual to organizational. Different theoretical perspectives are employed to analyze the findings, highlighting both the social and instrumental aspects of policy learning. Using multiple conceptual approaches helps account for important contributions as well as limitations of open coordination for the internationalization of science and technology agenda in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study sought to gain a better understanding of the ways in which users access academic research, by observing decision-making at the micro level in a public health unit (PHU) in Ontario, Canada. The overarching question guiding the study is as follows: how do PHU staff members access, engage with, and make use of academic research in order to advance their mandate? Ethnographic methods were used to collect data from direct observations and informant input, augmented by document review. A two-dimensional (2D) continuum of research use was adopted as an organizing heuristic. Research use was shown to be highly dynamic, spanning (spatially) across and transitioning (temporally) through both dimensions of the 2D organizing heuristic. While this research focuses on the context of use, it acknowledges interactions with the other contexts. This study suggests that users may have more ‘agency’ in the ways in which they engage with and use research. The full range of possibilities discussed is critical for accurately documenting the impacts of academic research. Findings should be relevant to other sectors where research use capacity is being developed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Our historical study of Canada’s main research university illuminates the overlooked influence of national identities and interests as forces shaping the institutionalization of technology transfer. Through the use of archival sources we trace the rise and influence of Canadian technological nationalism—a response to Canada’s perceived dependency on the United States’ science and technology. Technological nationalism provided a symbol for producing a shared understanding of the desirability and appropriateness of technology transfer that legitimated the commercial activities of university scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past three decades, university research activities have increasingly become organized towards external economic and social worlds. In this essay, we reflect on the observations and explanations made in papers published in Higher Education Policy on this topic, and discuss their contributions towards understanding university third stream activities. We build on this by considering the increased university support for student entrepreneurship that has pervaded higher education in the last several years and the implications of this trend for thinking about the economic relevancy of universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study identifies contemporary government accountability requirements impacting research councils in North America and Europe and investigates how councils deal with such demands. This investigation is set against the background of rising policy frameworks stressing public sector accountability that have led many national governments to enact legislation requiring public agencies to collect more performance information and tie it to decision-making. Through documentary analysis and interviews with informants at several research councils we clarify how broader policy trends are reflected in the operation of public institutions that provide critical support for academic science. In addition to legislation cast broadly to regulate the activities of all government agencies, numerous regulations and guidelines have been targeted specifically at science and technology (S&T) activities. Regulations on S&T expenditures in general and on research councils more specifically include efforts to develop new metrics specific to science-based or innovation-based outcomes, to enhance the use of indicators in decision-making, to focus on tracing the broad impacts of programs, to increase the frequency of reporting, and to make agencies more responsive to business and public interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada's province of Ontario introduced a new policy in 2000 allowing community colleges to offer a new type of undergraduate degree. This decision was a significant policy change for the government considering the nature of Ontario's binary system, where a rigid separation has historically prevailed between the university and college sectors. Drawing on multiple sources of data, this study indicates that the decision to create a new type of applied bachelor's degree generated a series of uncertainties and challenges for higher education institutions, students and government agencies. The paper highlights the need for policy makers to consider the socio-cultural aspects of higher education systems in policy design, particularly the role of legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the regional dynamics that prevail in North America within the higher education sector. The coming into effect of NAFTA in 1994 raised expectations of greater integration among the higher education systems of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. While NAFTA did not involve education, it had implications for higher education through professional mutual recognition agreements, trilateral programs, and indirectly through regional advocacy. The higher education sector provides interesting insights for the broader debate on North American regionalism whereby asymmetries among partners shape policy developments with special implication' for Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research analyzes the role of experts in the European Union's policy-making process. Focusing on the field of research policy, this study seeks to probe how expert participation in the Open Method of Coordination informs policy decisions. The paper reports on an analysis of the expert group in the European Internationalization Strategy in Science and Technology. Our analysis reveals the dynamics of expert participation at the micro level, as it identifies who these experts are, how they are appointed, and in what ways expert knowledge gets used in policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organized research units-also known as centers, institutes, and laboratories-are increasingly prominent in the university. This paper examines how ORUs emerge to promote global agendas and international collaborations in an academic health center in North America. The roles these units play in helping researchers work across institutional and national boundaries are identified and analyzed. The concept of boundary organizations is employed to explain the features of ORUs and the challenges they face. Findings provide insight into how such units operate between local and global mandates, interest groups, and sources of influence, helping to extend university research into the global space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional mutual recognition agreements (MRAs) are one of the policy instruments employed in global and regional trade agreements to facilitate the mobility of skilled labour. While such agreements have been noted in the literature examining cross-border academic mobility, little is known about how they impact higher education. This paper examines the formation of professional MRAs in North America since the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), focusing on three fields: engineering, architecture, and accounting. In the three professions, asymmetries characterizing the NAFTA partners led to system-level reforms in Mexico. The paper discusses how and why the institutional arrangements governing professional higher education in the country were ‘harmonized’ with those of the United States and Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada's research policy has aimed to facilitate technology transfer from universities and induce innovation in industry for the past three decades. This article examines the policy instruments currently employed by the federal government in Canada to stimulate university-industry research linkages. First, the article examines the national landscape of industry R&D and its interface with university research. Then, multiple policy instruments are identified, and their goals and functions are examined. Finally, the article discusses the main features and implications of Canada's policy approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal to enhance the impacts of academic research in the 'real world' resonates with progressive visions of the role of universities in society, and finds support among policy makers who have sought to enhance the 'transfer', 'translation', 'uptake', or 'valorization' of research knowledge in several areas of public services. This paper reports on an exploratory study of the strategies used by selected Canadian and international faculties of education to mobilize research knowledge. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with senior administrators of 13 faculties of education, the analysis reveals several themes. Academic leaders recognize knowledge mobilization as a desirable institutional mission, but they identify a number of barriers to greater efforts in this area. Although a number of strategies are employed, changes across multiple organizational dimensions to encourage and support knowledge mobilization were reported at only two institutions. These results are relevant to faculty administrators, scholars, and policy-makers interested in understanding the role of academic institutions in the mobilization of research knowledge to the broader education community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most hotly debated issues in contemporary academic science is the tension between open scientific inquiry and the privatisation of knowledge through intellectual property. Nowhere is this tension more obvious than in the life sciences, where academic research and industrial R&D have become intermingled. This paper examines the open science approach employed in the research field of structural genomics, giving rise to specific arrangements to organise the production and dissemination of knowledge. Features of the structural genomics approach are identified and discussed as they relate to the characteristics of the field and more generally to scientific activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emerging field of nanotechnology has created a new frontier for the convergence of university and industrial research. In the United States, major federal investments provided a massive boom for this field over the decade. This paper reports on a case study of how the University at Albany came to establish the first college of nanotechnology in the US, as part of a larger R&D complex oriented towards building a regional nanoelectronics cluster. The case points to the role of entrepreneurs in mobilizing ideas and resources to advance novel organizational forms. This study demonstrates how a mode of technology transfer based on research facilities was deliberately used to build a nanotechnology complex at Albany, highlighting the enabling role of state S&T policies in supporting university engagements in regional economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global health is becoming an important area of inquiry and learning in North American research universities, stemming from on-going and new commitments to the field by multiple governmental and non-governmental agents. External demands for research and education in global health require enhanced inter-disciplinary, inter-sectoral and international collaborations, all perceived as growing trends but often not easily accommodated in universities. This paper investigates how four leading universities in Canada and the US have entered the field of global health, exploring the relationships among national contexts, academic structures, and institutional strategies. Content analysis of institutional records is triangulated with data from sixty interviews with academic leaders and researchers at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, McGill and Toronto. Resource asymmetries emerge as an important differentiating factor shaping the emergence of global health in the American and Canadian institutions. Domestic sources of support and previous academic structures provided important cumulative advantages to the US campuses in claiming national and international leadership in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines innovations in strategic faculty hiring emphasizing interdisciplinarity at two major public research universities in the USA. The research investigated how and why the Pennsylvania State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison chose to pursue interdisciplinary faculty recruitment, how it was structured, and how it was intended to cause changes in academic work at each university. The paper analyzes how the interdisciplinary aims of those innovations intersected with competitive pressures, resource acquisition strategies, and organizational problems. Implications are discussed in the last section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the characteristics and organizational issues associated with university-based research centers. The first section sketches general characteristics and functions of centers. The second section examines major issues concerning the organization of centers, including funding and sustainability, center autonomy, and relations with academic units. Implications for central administration are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of increasing support for interdisciplinary modes of research, many in the policy, scientific, and academic communities propose that universities should change structurally to reduce the barriers to investigation that involves researchers from multiple disciplines. This paper examines ‘interdisciplinary strategies’ in U.S. research universities—deliberate efforts to spur collaborative research across traditional departmental and disciplinary boundaries, including the creation and adaptation of university policies, practices, and structures. It identifies and analyzes the use of incentive grants to initiate new interdisciplinary units, the establishment of ‘campus-wide institutes’ that steer campus investments in interdisciplinary areas, and new modes of faculty hiring and evaluation. Illustrative examples are provided, and the implications of these strategies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Brazil’s Sector Funds, an emerging research and development policy that seeks to increase public-private research collaboration. The first section sets the context of the ‘policy problem’. The second section discusses the policy’s implementation, and discusses its likely implications for Brazil and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the recent history of State-level policies in the United States for knowledge-based economic development, and identifies an emerging model based on technology creation. This new model goes beyond traditional investments in technology transfer and prioritizes cutting-edge scientific research in economically relevant fields. As research-intensive universities are indispensable for technology creation, these policies have yielded substantial new investments in university science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last three decades, Canadian universities have grown in size and complexity and undergone deep transformations. Meanwhile, who should be appointed as highest-ranking administrative officers and what they ought to be doing once appointed has remained hotly debated. This paper examines how Canadian universities' understanding and framing of their presidents and provosts in job advertisements has changed over this last thirty-year period. Our study analysed 153 job advertisements published between 1987 and 2017 to determine how these positions were portrayed over time. The analysis relied on a conceptualization of academic administration as a combination of scholarship, management, and leadership roles. Overall, the findings show an important shift in the symbolic language used to describe these positions, shifts which appear to be linked to Canadian universities' increasing use of recruiting firms. Presidents, first depicted as respected scholars, are now portrayed as charismatic heroes, while depictions of provosts have remained largely stable, focusing on their administrative support roles. Overall, the findings suggest that popular, if unrealistic, heroic depictions of Canadian university senior administrators are becoming prevalent in the crafting of job advertisements. Recognizing how these in turn shape how stakeholders understand these positions, greater attention should be given to the crafting of these key role signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International collaboration is a rapidly growing aspect of university research and a priority of research funding agencies. This article investigates the rationales that underlie Canadian federal research councils’ support of international research collaborations. Such support has deep roots in Canadian science and technology policy but has taken on a new importance in the past decade. Even in a context of increasingly costly scientific activity and fierce competition for resources, four sets of goals and associated arguments underpin investments in international collaboration: (1) creating economy of scale, (2) developing human resources, (3) advancing economic and scientific competitiveness and (4) solving global problems. Overall, international research collaborations are today a key policy target in Canada, sought for a variety of reasons but not without challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]