In the context of growing societal demand and interdependency, universities need to prioritize their ‘third mission’ activities and balance them against core functions. Individual researchers too are faced with multiple external constituencies and various mechanisms for interaction. The degree, target, and mode of their involvement with societal actors must be considered in light also of high performance expectations concerning traditional teaching and research activities. In this study, we explore patterns of third mission involvement among 652 researchers at the Science and Technology Faculty, Aarhus University from 2009 to 2012 using register-based data. First, we collect 13 indicators of third mission involvement from the university register system PURE, and find that these can be organized in distinct sets. External interaction and knowledge sharing can take many shapes, but they appear to group together empirically in ways that reflect the external partners and mode of involvement. Secondly, we determine five clusters of researchers based on their third mission activities. The majority of researchers have limited engagement in any kind of third mission activities, while an almost negligible minority entertain activities across the board. The remaining researchers focus their engagement on one type of third mission activity: public sector service, industrial collaboration, or executive involvement. Finally, we explore the interrelatedness of third mission involvement and research performance. Researchers who work closely with industry perform extremely well in terms of both publication productivity and impact, while those primarily engaged with public authorities perform considerably below average. We contextualize the results and highlight the limitations of the study.

中文翻译：

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科学家和工程师之间的第三次任务参与模式

在不断增长的社会需求和相互依存的背景下，大学需要优先考虑其“第三使命”活动，并使其与核心职能保持平衡。个别研究人员也面临着多个外部支持者和各种互动机制。还必须考虑对传统教学和研究活动的高绩效期望，考虑他们与社会行为者互动的程度，目标和方式。在这项研究中，我们使用基于寄存器的数据，探索了2009年至2012年奥胡斯大学科学技术学院的652名研究人员中的第三次任务参与模式。首先，我们从大学注册系统PURE收集了13个第三次任务参与指标，并发现它们可以按不同的集合进行组织。外部互动和知识共享可以采取多种形式，但是它们似乎在经验上以反映外部合作伙伴和参与方式的方式组合在一起。其次，我们根据研究人员的第三次任务活动确定了五个研究人员群。大多数研究人员参与任何类型的第三次任务活动的参与都有限，而几乎可以忽略的少数人则全程进行娱乐活动。其余的研究人员将他们的注意力集中在第三次任务活动的一种类型上：公共部门服务，产业合作或执行人员参与。最后，我们探讨了第三次任务参与与研究绩效之间的相互关系。与行业紧密合作的研究人员在出版效率和影响力方面均表现出色，而那些主要与公共机构打交道的人的表现大大低于平均水平。我们对结果进行了背景介绍，并强调了研究的局限性。