Business-Oriented Research Professionals – Empirical Results for Academics’ Interdisciplinarity and Their Collaboration with Enterprises

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to present profiles of scientists and research professionals who perform activities in favour of business. Characteristics of academics with reference to their scientific achievements, professional recognition and scientific interdisciplinarity are presented. Profiles are created on the basis of analyses of empirical results collected from the survey taken among academic society. It is possible to compare profiles of researchers working for business sector to these who are eager to cooperate with companies. Characteristics concerning individual scientists refer to their age, gender, scientific degree and affiliation, together with the discipline in which they perform their scientific activities. The following study is the part of the project aimed at investigation of Polish scientific community, with reference to interdisciplinarity in research fields and performance of Polish scientists. Analyses have been focused on studying relations between interdisciplinarity of research and successes of Polish scientists achieved at national level. The core idea of the given analyses is to identify and try to measure relations between business and scientific activities. It is suggested that academics collaborating with enterprises are producing more voluble research and publications. These scientists are also appreciated as scientific professionals by academic society. Finally, researchers supporting enterprises with scientific knowledge and expertise present higher level of interdisciplnarity in their research.