Exploring academia industry linkage through co-authorship social networks

Collaborations and sharing of knowledge has been one of the primary activities of academics and researchers. The purpose of any research and development activity is to transfer ideas into products. Any such activity is useless if its benefits do not percolate down to the society. IITs have been established in India on the model of MIT, USA and are supposed to produce high quality technocrats, produce path breaking research and provide solutions to common problem & societal issues. In this context they ought to have a strong industry linkage as they cannot convert ideas into product at their own. In this paper we explore the linkage between the faculty of these institutes and industry through joint publications i.e. co-authorships. Co-authorship is one of the most tangible and well documented forms of research activity and is capable of providing intrinsic details about all aspects of research credentials of individuals, institutes, communities, organizations, etc. This study reveals that these institutes have not been up to expectations and need to strengthen their industry linkage if they want to transfer the knowledge from their confines to industry and fulfill their mandate.