An increasingly debated issue is if increasing patent activities and growing research collaboration with industry by university teachers may imply a negative effect on quality and
quantity of publications.
On a theoretical point of view it is possible to consider substitution and complementarity effects between industrially relevant research and publications.
Existing empirical analyses, estimating regression equations, seem to show a positive effects of patents on publications. Nevertheless such kind of analysis lets only to verify the overall effect, not to deeply analyse the existing relationship.
To this purpose we conducted a survey in three scientific sectors (chemistry, engineering, biology) and three universities (Bologna, Ferrara, Trieste). This survey enquires the motivations, incentives and limits to collaboration between university and industry and helps to identify and to distinguish complementarity and substitution effects between "academic" and "industrial" research.