Universities, as research institutions, played a significant role in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. This study examines how the pandemic and its related necessities affected the scope and type of research, development, and innovation (RDI) at universities in eight Central-Eastern European (CEE) countries. All Facebook posts from March 2020 until June 2021 were collected and using pandemic-related keywords, relevant posts were further extracted, coded and analyzed. Our findings elucidated significant differences among the universities in their RDI efforts during the pandemic. Austrian universities exhibited higher levels of inter-institutional research and business collaborations, whereas the RDI efforts in the rest of the CEE sample universities were geared to solve more immediate needs the pandemic brought on. One of the main contributions of this study is the understanding of the RDI potential of the region and the relevance of establishing inter-institutional and business cooperation networks at national and international levels. The study shows that during the pandemic universities demonstrated high RDI potential to quickly react to critical needs, offered open innovations, open licensing, showed collaborative abilities and effective use of their academic and student resources.

大学作为研究机构，在抗击 COVID-19 大流行中发挥了重要作用。本研究调查了大流行及其相关必需品如何影响八个中东欧 (CEE) 国家的大学的研究、开发和创新 (RDI) 的范围和类型。收集了 2020 年 3 月至 2021 年 6 月的所有 Facebook 帖子，并使用与大流行相关的关键字，进一步提取、编码和分析相关帖子。我们的研究结果阐明了大流行期间大学在 RDI 努力方面的显着差异。奥地利大学展示了更高水平的机构间研究和商业合作，而其他中东欧样本大学的 RDI 努力旨在解决大流行带来的更紧迫的需求。本研究的主要贡献之一是了解该地区的 RDI 潜力以及在国家和国际层面建立机构间和商业合作网络的相关性。研究表明，在大流行期间，大学展示了快速响应关键需求、提供开放式创新、开放式许可、展示协作能力以及有效利用其学术和学生资源的高 RDI 潜力。