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This chapter aims to provide an overview of the ethical framework and decision-making in clinical dementia research, and to analyze and discuss the ethical challenges and issues that can arise when conducting clinical dementia research.

Informed consent is the most scrutinized and controversial aspect of clinical research ethics. In clinical dementia research, assessing decision-making capacity may be challenging as the nature and progress of each disease influences decision-making capacity in diverse ways. Persons with dementia represent a vulnerable population deserving special attention when developing, implementing, and evaluating the informed consent process. In this chapter, particular attention will be given to vulnerability categories and how these influence decision-making capacity. Ethical frameworks with a pragmatic contour and implication are needed to protect vulnerable patients from potential harms and ensure their optimal participation in clinical dementia research.

In addition, this chapter analyses important ethical challenges and issues in clinical dementia research. If handled thoughtfully, they would not pose insuperable barriers to research. But if they are ignored, they could slow the research process, alienate potential study subjects and cause harm to research participants. Ethical considerations in research involving persons with dementia primarily concern the representation of the interests of the participants with dementia and protection of their vulnerabilities and rights.

A core set of ethical questions and recommendations are drawn to aid researchers, institutional review boards and potential research participants in the process of participating in clinical dementia research.

This chapter evaluates the readiness of the higher education system to contribute to the competitiveness of African countries in the knowledge economy. Using institutions of higher learning in Kenya and Uganda as case studies, the study demonstrates that the higher education system in Africa is ill-equipped to fulfill the role of knowledge production for the advancement of African economies. The chapter proposed promising ways through which higher education in the region can play a more fulfilling role to the global knowledge economy through the formation of relevant skills for the growth of African economies. In an era where knowledge assets are accorded more importance than capital and labor assets, and where the economy relies on knowledge as the key engine of economic growth, this chapter argues that higher education institutions in Africa can assist in tackling the continent’s challenges through research in knowledge creation, dissemination, and utilization for improved productivity. These institutions need to engage in design-driven innovation in the emerging knowledge economy. To enhance their contributions toward human capital development and knowledge-intensive economies in the region, it is imperative to employ public-private initiatives to bridge and address various challenges and gaps facing universities and research institutions in Africa.

Leadership development is an essential yet complex process that manifests over a long period of time. Owusu et al. assert that in African researchers’ graduate programs, the learners receive theory, research methods and grant writing instruction without significant attention to leadership development. So, how do researchers, academics, administrators, and think-tanks plan and carry out leadership–followership development within organizational and transitional justice fields? The research capacity building of young African scholars in the knowledge production community has the potential to lead to the development and articulation of norms and values that will seek to address fundamental issues of transformation, direct, structural, and cultural violence, and assist in addressing a wide range of problems associated with violence of social injustice. We draw lessons from the Africa Young Graduate Scholars (AYGS) 2017 conference and writing retreat, which drew 22 young scholars (with 10 females and 12 males) who had completed original research and five facilitators (two females and three males) from universities in Botswana, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe for developing research leader–follower insights.

Building research leadership–followership capacity in knowledge production communities in the context of conflict prevention is crucial for establishing sustainable peace. It is recommended that: (1) the AYGS be replicated on other parts of the continent and throughout the diaspora; (2) publications from emerging leaders and followers in the research/knowledge production community begin to increase; and (3) establishment and expansion of leadership development programs for research leaders and followers in African graduate programs.

Research with vulnerable groups is crucial to get their input into public policy design that will directly impact on them. However, there are many methodological and ethical challenges involved in encouraging participation from groups with a wide range of intellectual, cognitive and physical capacities while ensuring that the rights and well-being of participants are protected. Rather than exploring ethical theories, this chapter is a case study describing the practical ethical considerations that were involved in designing and holding a series of focus groups with adult health and social care service users from vulnerable cohorts. It is based on a series of focus groups which the Institute of Public Health (IPH) held with specified cohorts as part of a policy development process on adult safeguarding for the Department of Health (DOH) in Ireland. The four cohorts were people with intellectual disability, cognitive impairments, significant mental health challenges and nursing home residents. This chapter does not describe the findings of the focus groups but outlines the ethical and methodological considerations that arose in designing and conducting this research, and the practical ethical safeguards employed to mitigate risk and comply with Irish and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation governing health research. It outlines the ethical issues around protecting confidentiality and using incentives to encourage participation, how individuals' capacity to give informed consent was maximized, the risk-assessment and mitigation procedures used to prevent harms arising and the measures put in place to provide follow-up emotional support to participants.

The relationship between knowledge and innovation is well established in the strategy and entrepreneurship literatures. However, little is known about how absorptive capacity – the firm's ability to acquire, assimilate, and use new knowledge – effects innovation in new firms. We build on extant conceptual arguments from scholars who assert that the concept of absorptive capacity can be delineated into a number of individual components, and we test the influences of each component on innovation using a sample of new firms in the Swedish telecom, IT, media, and entertainment sectors. We find that while all of the components of absorptive capacity influence innovation in new ventures, acquiring new technological knowledge and employing mechanisms for exploiting new knowledge have the greatest effects. Our results provide a direct empirical test of the linkage between absorptive capacity and innovation, and suggest that the effects of these components of absorptive capacity on performance are more complex than previously articulated in the literature. We conclude with implications for future research surrounding absorptive capacity.

This chapter will describe and assess initiatives by the University of Oslo (UoO) in Norway, the purpose of which has been to expand and improve collaboration with universities in Africa, notably the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) in Tanzania. UoO has a long history of North-South cooperation with a wide range of institutions on the African continent. In 2009, the UoO initiated a collaborative program with UDSM entitled “Program for Institutional Transformation Research Outreach” (PITRO) III, supported by Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation (NORAD). The chapter will situate the UoO-UDSM cooperation in relation to Norwegian aid, and compare the program with previous programs, giving attention to the ways they were developed, how problems and challenges were tackled, and the probable consequences for Tanzania’s development. The chapter will compare and contrast the structure and experiences from these programs, and will point out strengths and weaknesses. Attention will be given to the rights-based approach, an important new dimension in North-South cooperation on higher education in Africa. It will be argued that the incorporation of this approach provides a basis for developing new policies and programs that strengthen African collaboration within research, education, and capacity building in higher education.

Purpose – The cost of new drug development is increasing every year. Pharmaceutical companies use R&D joint ventures, mergers, and outsource different stages of pharmaceutical R&D activities for a faster and cost minimizing method of innovation. Pharmaceutical companies outsource R&D activities to independent small biotech or pharmaceutical companies that specialize in different stages of pharmaceutical R&D. This chapter examines the determinants of the payment structure of research contracts between large bio/pharmaceutical companies and specialized research firms.

Methods – Determinants of R&D contracts are analyzed using detailed R&D contract data between bio/pharmaceutical companies and independent research firms for 10 years. A multinomial logit model is used in order to understand the determinants of three different types of contracts; royalty contracts, fixed payment contracts, and the mixed contracts.

Findings – Under uncertainty, the likelihood of a royalty contract rises for the early stages of the research and with the patent stock of the research firm. It is more likely to observe both royalty and fixed payment if the pharmaceutical client has past contracts with the same research firm. The results also suggest that if Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is more stringent in any disease area in reviewing the new drug application, then the likelihood of signing pure royalty contract decreases.

Implications – Understanding the nature of R&D contracts and the effects of FDA's behavior on the pharmaceutical R&D contract is important because these contracts not only affect the cost of new drug invention but also the quality and the rate of invention.

Value – Results are useful for both the pharmaceutical companies and the economic/business researchers.

This chapter provides an overview of the findings and chapters of a thematic volume in the International Perspectives on Education and Society (IPES) series. It describes the common dataset and methods used by an international research team.

The chapter synthesizes the results of a series of country-level case studies and cross-national and regional comparisons on the growth of scientific research from 1900 until 2011. Additionally, the chapter provides a quantitative analysis of global trends in scientific, peer-reviewed publishing over the same period.

The introduction identifies common themes that emerged across the case studies examined in-depth during the multi-year research project Science Productivity, Higher Education, Research and Development and the Knowledge Society (SPHERE). First, universities have long been and are increasingly the primary organizations in science production around the globe. Second, the chapters describe in-country and cross-country patterns of competition and collaboration in scientific publications. Third, the chapters describe the national policy environments and institutionalized organizational forms that foster scientific research.

The introduction reviews selected findings and limitations of previous bibliometric studies and explains that the chapters in the volume address these limitations by applying neo-institutional theoretical frameworks to analyze bibliometric data over an extensive period.

Tertiary education in Ghana has seen rapid advancement over the past two decades. This growth is the result of transformative policy reforms such as upgrading polytechnics into higher education status; the establishment of the University of Development Studies (UDS) in the northern part of the country; the amalgamation of existing Colleges of Education into degree awarding institutions; the creation of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) to provide supplementary financial support for infrastructure, faculty research and development; expansion of distance education programs; modification of the student loan scheme; and a conducive regulatory environment that encourages private sector participation in higher education provision. In spite of these developments, the system continues to face several challenges such as limited funding to support academic programs; limited participation rates for low-income students, females, and minorities; difficulty recruiting and retaining young academic and research faculty; inadequate research capacities; limited ICT infrastructure to enhance instruction and curriculum delivery and inadequate facilities to support science and technology education; etc. This chapter focuses on the state of public higher education in Ghana with emphasis on current growth and challenges. The chapter offers descriptive analysis based on government policy reports and documents, enrollment data from universities in Ghana, and data from the Ministry of Education and the National Council for Tertiary Education in Ghana.

This chapter provides a historical overview of policies on higher education in South Korea since 1945 and illustrates growth of science production based on expansion of higher education.

We divide higher education policies into three historical time periods: (1) 1945–1950s, a period of developing modern higher education system; (2) 1960s–early 1990s, a period of rapid expansion of higher education, while government establishing a few research-focused science and technology institutions aimed at better quality research production; and (3) since mid-1990s, a period of fostering the workforce and raising science productivity in universities using targeted investments in research. We use the SPHERE project’s comprehensive historical dataset based on Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science and data from Higher Education in Korea to analyze growth in scientific publication in national and organizational level.

The analysis suggests that the combined private and public investments in the expansion of higher education, and sequential policy intervention facilitated the massive and ongoing growth of science production in Korea.

The chapter provides a thorough description about the growth of higher education and science production in South Korea and draws lessons for developing capacity for producing science.