Doctoral Dissertation Research: International Collaboration and Research Capabilities

最近的趋势表明，与该区域具有类似经济特征的国家相比，哥伦比亚的研发绩效正在迅速提高。这大概是哥伦比亚科学和技术系统的两个“大趋势”的结果：1)在哥伦比亚政府和精英研究机构的支持下组建研究团队，实现了研发企业的迅速专业化；2)自90年代经济对外贸开放以来，哥伦比亚科学界特别是科学界的国际化。这项科学和社会论文改进补助金的目的是为数据收集提供资金，以帮助理解国际研究合作如何影响哥伦比亚研究团队的表现所反映的当地科学和技术能力。在这个框架中，S科技的能力将通过团队的生产力、产出的质量、他们对S科技领域学生教育的贡献、对当地知识的贡献以及他们的创新能力来衡量。将分析团队特征、合作伙伴特征、科学纪律、行业、本地化、团队本土机构特征、团队规模、团队年龄和团队负责人特征等中介因素，以更好地了解国际研究合作对研究团队绩效的影响方式。这项研究在许多方面具有创新性：1)它试图经验性地解决研究政策文献中相对被忽视的一个问题：发展中国家背景下的国际研究合作的积极和消极影响；2)它使用研究团队作为分析单位和战略政策目标，因为它是哥伦比亚国家科技和创新体系的基石；3)应用一套计量经济学技术，旨在最大限度地减少内生性和选择偏见的影响，这些技术越来越多地用于项目评估，以评估政策干预的影响，但从未用于回答所制定的研究问题和假设。这项研究试图支持政策工具的设计，以开发国际合作可以为发展中国家提供的机会，以此作为减少它们落后状况的一种方式，并支持确定避免这种努力所隐含的不可忽视的风险的机制。

Recent trends show that Colombian R&D performance is rapidly improving as compared to countries of similar economic characteristics in the region. This is presumably the result of two 'mega trends' characterizing the Colombian Science and Technology System: 1) the rapid professionalization of the R&D enterprise as materialized by the formation of research teams with the support of the Colombiangovernment and the elite research institutions, and 2) the internationalization of its scientific community specially since the 90s after the opening of the economy to foreign trade. The purpose of this Science and Society Dissertation Improvement Grant is to provide funds for data collection that will contribute to the understanding of the ways international research collaboration can affect local scientific and technologicalcapabilities as reflected by the performance of research teams in Colombia. In this framework, S&T capabilities will be measured by the productivity of the teams; the quality of their outputs; their contribution to the education of students in the S&T domains; their ability to contribute to local knowledge; and their ability to innovate. Mediating factors such as team characteristics, partner characteristics, scientific discipline, sector, localization, characteristics of the teams' home institution, team size,team age, and characteristics of the team leader will be analyzed to better understand the ways international research collaboration affects research team performance. This research is in many respects innovative: 1) it attempts to empirically address an issue relatively neglected in the research policy literature: the positive and negative effects of international research collaboration in a developing country context; 2) it uses research teams as unit of analysis and as strategic policy targets given its role as building blocks of the Colombian national science and technology and innovation system; and 3) applies a set of econometric techniques designed to minimize the effects of endogeneity and selection bias increasingly used in program evaluation to assess the impact of policy interventions but never used to answer the research questions and hypotheses formulated. This research attempts to support the design of policy tools oriented to the exploitation of the opportunities international collaboration can offer to developing countries as a way to reduce their lagging condition, and to support the identification of mechanisms for avoiding the non-negligible risks implicit in such endeavor.