A bibliometric tool to assess the regional dimension of university–industry research collaborations

The present study proposes a bibliometric methodology for measuring the grade of correspondence between regional industry’s demand for research collaboration and supply from public laboratories. The methodology also permits measurement of the intensity and direction of the regional flows of knowledge in public–private collaborations. The aim is to provide a diagnostic instrument for regional and national policy makers, which could add to existing ones to plan interventions for re-balancing sectorial public supply of knowledge with industrial absorptive capacity, and maximizing appropriability of knowledge spillovers. The methodology is applied to university–industry collaborations in the hard sciences in all Italian administrative regions.