Most of the researches in applied sciences do not end up with an application - developing either a feasible technique, a product or commercialization. Instead the results and conclusions are mainly focused just for a publication in their credit. How do we insist such projects to be more focused to an application since the grants of those projects are from the public money but nothing yielded towards the public benefit.
Basically, scientists do their best to comply/maximize several scientometric indicators. I think it would be best to start with redefinition/refining of these indicators so that they take into account also products and commercialization.
However, it must be approached with caution not to omit scientists with a large indirect contribution - ie those who do not commercialize their research themselves, but the published results of their studies have inspired others to commercialize. We can not expect every scientist to be an entrepreneur.
Research, in most academic circles, is of the basic or fundamental type which does not end up with immediate applications. If academic institutions are encouraged to be engaged in applied research, then a large amount of money has to be provided for such purpose. The challenge, of finding out a new technique or a successfully marketed product, is worthwhile. This is because the reward will be more than the money spent initially.
However, the more "relaxed" atmosphere (in academia) usually drives scholars to do "whatever" research in order to get promotion & increase their salaries. This has meant low quality research that is given more importance than its true value.
If the research was financed in a targeted way, then it should justify the invested funds and create the commercial product for which the targeted money was allocated. Otherwise, it will be fraud. I think that the way out of this situation could be the following. You need to order the creation of the same commercial product to several organizations and, after some time, get a preliminary result from them, which should convince you of the real creation of this product. Naturally, we must pay for this time to these organizations, since they were working on this contract. Then you need to compare these preliminary results and choose the organization that presented the best preliminary result with a goal to create a commercial product. After this, it is necessary to conclude a contract with this organization to develop a commercial product. As for the other organizations, they just need to say a lot of thanks and forget about them. Let these organizations be satisfied only with their publications, but next time they will be more responsible, otherwise they will lose their jobs.
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