The impact of transaction costs on the institutional structuration of collaborative academic research

This paper addresses a crucial question: Which factors explain the choices of institutional structures made by university researchers? The main findings of the study point to the central importance of publication assets, coordination costs, additional funding, and membership in the disciplines of engineering, natural sciences and health sciences as factors affecting the choices of institutional structures university researchers make when they become involved in collaborative research projects. On the other hand, the number of years researchers have been involved in collaborative research, the capture of additional publications Linked to involvement in collaborative research, the importance of administrative burdens and the One required to coordinate collaborative research were demonstrated to be unimportant in explaining these choices. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.