Brief Description | This seeks to measure the scale of knowledge transfer (KT) activity taking place between the Scottish Higher Education (HE) sector and the wider business and public sectors. At present there is no single measure of knowledge transfer and the process encompasses a range of activities, many of which are difficult to measure. This is why measurement of KT usually focuses on those activities that are more amenable to quantification, such as income from research and commercialisation activities. The measurement of this national indicator takes a similar approach, by capturing the Scottish HE sector's income from a variety of knowledge transfer activities ranging from the commercialisation of new research to delivery of professional training, consultancy and services. In this respect the indicator is a proxy measure of the quantity, but not the quality, of KT activities undertaken by Scottish universities. |
Strategic Objective(s) to Which Indicator Relates | This indicator aims to inform progress in relation to the Smarter Strategic Objective. Knowledge transfer activities help universities to both expand their work with business and to develop more business relevant research. The indicator also links to National Indicator 1 on Gross Expenditure on R&D, and supports the Wealthier and Fairer strategic objective. Knowledge transfer activity helps Scottish-based firms to improve their productivity and competitiveness through the use of the knowledge, skills and technology generated by Scotland's Higher Education sector. |
Methodology for Data Source | The data used are a weighted, inflation-adjusted index of the Scottish Funding Council's (SFC) Knowledge Transfer Metrics Return. These were developed by SFC and Universities Scotland, and are collected by SFC annually. They have been used as a means of allocating a grant for knowledge transfer to universities, in effect by rewarding them for the volume of income from their historic KT activities. They record the actual income universities received the previous year under a number of categories (metrics) of knowledge transfer activities e.g. from licensing or consultancy. SFC 'weights' each metric based on the importance it attaches to that category of income. For example, the SFC places a greater weight on income from publicly-funded schemes such as Proof of Concept, and a lesser weight on activities that generate income for institutions, such as licensing or venture capital. SFC uses the results of the weighting exercise to allocate funding to higher education institutions. The SFC's Knowledge Transfer Metrics Return data were adjusted to enable them to be used to measure progress on the National Indicator (see table below for the metrics, SFC weightings and SG weightings). The main adjustment made was to give a zero weighting to all publicly-funded activities to stimulate KT, such as European Structural Funds and Scottish / UK KT grants. This was to ensure any change in the index is not directly influenced by a change in public funding. This left two categories of income. First, from activities which demonstrate actual KT linkages between universities and businesses, such as research, commercialisation, consultancy and provision of continuing professional development, which were given a full weighting. Second, from external research grants from public bodies, which were given a medium weighting because they result from universities bidding against each other competitively to win contracts to transfer their knowledge to public sector bodies. Finally, the data were adjusted to strip out the effects of inflation and turned into an index with the base year set at 2007-08. The Open University in Scotland (OU) and the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) received funding from the SFC's knowledge transfer grant in 2006-07 (OU) and in 2010-11 (SAC) for the first time. The allocation of this funding was based on data for 2004-05 for OU and data for 2007-08 and 2008-09 for SAC, therefore data for these institutions are only available from 2004-05 and 2007-08 onwards respectively. Whilst the inclusion of the OU does not significantly affect the trend, the inclusion of the SAC does have a material impact and therefore data prior to 2007-08 is not comparable with data from 2007-08 onwards. A break in the series, denoted by a change of colour, has been inserted to illustrate this. In the most recent year, 2008-09 to 2009-10, the index fell by 2.0 index points. Knowledge Transfer Metric | SFC Weight | SG Weight | Knowledge Transfer Metric | SFC Weight | SG Weight | External research grants & contracts (UK/ non-UK industry, SMEs & other sources) | 2.25 | 1.0 | Proof of Concept Fund | 4.0 | 0 | Consultancy | 3.5 | 1.0 | Enterprise Fellowship | 4.0 | 0 | Continuing Professional Development | 2.5 | 1.0 | Teaching Company Scheme | 5.0 | 0 | Licensing | 1.5 | 1.0 | Faraday Partnership | 4.0 | 0 | Venture capital | 1.0 | 1.0 | LINK and ForesightLINK | 4.0 | 0 | External research grants & contracts (UK central government/LAs, health & hospital authorities) | 2.25 | 0.5 | University Challenge Fund | 1.0 | 0 | European Structural Funds | 5 | 0 | | | |
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Methodology for Recent Change Arrow on Scotland | Performance Improving - an increase of 2.5 index points or more Performance Maintaining - an increase/ decrease of less than 2.5 index points OR no change Performance Worsening - a decrease of 2.5 index points or more |