In recent years, the growing interest of universities in valorization of research activities (tipically through technology transfer—patenting and licensing—and academic entrepreneurship) has generated a debate on its impact on scientific knowledge production. There have been controversies on the potentially negative effect of university research valorization on public research, in terms of quality, long term vs short term orientation, and accessibility. The debate has been traditionally framed in terms of substitution vs complementarity between public research and valorization. In this paper we argue that the key to understand the relation between public research and valorization lies in the role of research funding, particularly: (a) competitive public research funding; (b) third party commercial funding. If the funding system (both public and private) takes the value of academic research as signal of quality, then high quality researchers are able to attract extra-funds beyond ordinary endowment. In turn, these additional funds can be used as a source to organize an effective and long-term division of labor in laboratories in order to support inventions and licensing (patents) and entrepreneurial activities (spin-off companies). In this case academic quality and commercialization are strong complement and positive feedback loops are generated. This interpretation on the role of funding is strongly supported by original data from the Italian Evaluation of Research Quality VQR 2011–2014 dataset. The paper is based on a unique and novel dataset, that integrates data on valorization of research activities at individual and institutional level on all the Italian universities and microdata on research quality on 32,616 researchers in STEM disciplines.

近年来，大学越来越重视研究活动的价值评估（主要是通过技术转让，专利和许可以及学术企业家精神），引发了关于其对科学知识生产的影响的辩论。在质量，长期与短期方向以及可及性方面，关于大学研究价值评估对公共研究的潜在负面影响一直存在争议。传统上，辩论是根据公共研究与价值评估之间的替代与互补来进行的。在本文中，我们认为了解公共研究与价值评估之间关系的关键在于研究资金的作用，特别是：（a）竞争性公共研究资金；（b）第三方商业资金。质量信号，那么高素质的研究人员就能够吸引超出普通捐赠能力的额外资金。反过来，这些额外的资金可以用作来源组织实验室的长期有效分工，以支持发明和许可（专利）和企业活动（衍生公司）。在这种情况下，学术质量和商业化是有力的补充，并产生了积极的反馈回路。意大利研究质量VQR 2011-2014数据集的原始数据大力支持了这种对资金作用的解释。该论文基于一个独特而新颖的数据集，该数据集整合了意大利所有大学在个人和机构层面上研究活动的价值评估数据和STEM学科中32,616名研究人员的研究质量微观数据。