Metadata analysis of systematic literature reviews on academic spin-offs

Abstract

Besides assuming the role of teaching, research, and extension, the university, has expanded the boundaries of scientific knowledge to promote a business ecosystem. The business-related activities can be driven by the leadership of students with an entrepreneurial capacity, based on the technology transfer produced by the academic research and generated by companies that somehow have been idealized or had the active participation of the faculty members and the technology under their control. This model of companies, named in the literature as academic spin-off, has increased the attention of researchers at two main points: i. understanding the phenomenon itself and ii. contribute to identifying the lack of the process, whether related to the support structure or capacitation of faculty members to develop the entrepreneurial activities, as well as in understanding the commercialization of knowledge as technology transfer. In this context, the present work provided a metadata analysis of systematic literature reviews on the academic spin-off, mapping the knowledge on the subject and searching for reviews that cover the technology transfer models to study the viability of protecting the academic intellectual property as a product. Methodology: the data used in this study were retrieved from the database Web of Science and revised according to the protocol Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). The bibliometric analysis of metadata was conducted in RStudio software with the package Bibliometrix and its web interface Biblioshiny. Results: 40 review articles published in peer-reviewed journals from 2006 to 2021 were selected from the initial collection. Then, as result of the bibliometric analysis, it was obtained the data of production indices (main authors, sources, and most cited articles), the evolution of chronological discussion on the subject, and other complementary. Conclusion: it was found indications of studies that discuss technology transfer models and others that examined empiric models in the academic scenario. However, in the selected collection, was not identified any review papers on academic entrepreneurship that were related to the viability of intellectual property as products to be commercialized. Also, it was identified that the word academic entrepreneurship stands out as the main keyword word to represent the research.