Alternative Energy/EFRCs Survey Questions

Biographic Information

1. Name of the institution at which your EFRC is based?__________________________________________

2. Official name of your EFRC?__________________________________________

3. Name of the representative answering this questionnaire?__________________________________________

4. Your job title and role within the EFRC?__________________________________________

5. Name of the institution's department or departments that this EFRC is affiliated with?__________________________________________

6. Year your EFRC was founded?__________________________________________

7. How many people are involved with the EFRC's research?__________________________________________

7.1 How many are:

( ) Full time/fully covered by the institution hosting the EFRC

( ) Full time/fully covered by the grant

( ) Full time/partially covered by the grant

( ) Part time/fully covered by the institution hosting the EFRC

( ) Part time/fully covered by the grant

( ) Part time/partially covered by the grant

7.2 How many are:

( ) Professors

( ) Post-Doc researchers

( ) Students

( ) PhD candidates

( ) Masters candidates

( ) Undergraduates

8. Who in your center is in charge of taking decisions over how knowledge produced by your center is handled? Is your center subject to the Technology Transfer Office guidelines?_______________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Technology Focus

1. What Technology Focus is your EFRC pursuing under this grant?__________________________________________
1.1 Why was this focus chosen? __________________________________________
1.2 What are the expectations of the Center in focusing its efforts in this Technology? ________
1.3 Are the main expectations/goals of this research related to (choose only one):

( ) Defining basic knowledge parameters in the field
( ) Encouraging further scientific research within the field
( ) The prospect of commercialization of the technology developed

(CONCEPT: Technological Focus is defined as being the "EFRC Objective")

2. Was this technology under development at your institution prior to receiving the funding award to become an EFRC?
( ) Yes
( ) No

3. If the answer to question 2 was "Yes," how long has this technology been under development at your institution and who were the main funders?__________________________________________

4. At what stage in the technology value chain does your EFRC's research happen? (Check the most relevant answer)

( ) Basic Research
( ) Translational Research
( ) Development / Optimization
( ) Production / Manufacture
( ) Commercialization

5. Do you have any partners in any of the phases of your Research? __________________________________________

6. Please, provide any additional comments in regard to the strategy around the center's Technological Focus :
____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

7. If your center already hold granted patents, please specify them here: ____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

Funding

1. What is the total dollar value of the federal grant received to establish your EFRC?__________________________________________

2. Does the technology being pursued in your EFRC receive other federal grants?
( ) Yes
( ) No

3. If the answer to question 3 was yes, what is the dollar value of those grants and which federal organization is the origin of the award?
____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

4. What other sources of funding does your EFRC receive? (Check all applicable answers)

( ) Individual Philanthropic grants or individual donations
( ) Corporate sponsored research
( ) Foundation grant. List: ______________________________________________________
( ) Rent from rendering of services. Please give examples: ___________________________________________
( ) Rent from consulting services. Please give examples: ___________________________________________
( ) Rent from patent licensing
( ) None of the above. Other: ____________________________________________________

Please, provide any additional comments to your answer you find necessary:
____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

Knowledge Governance

Internal and External Knowledge

1. How does your EFRC treat research and technology information inside your organization? (Choose all that apply)

( )All EFRC staff sign onto a Trade Secret arrangement/arrangement
( )All EFRC staff sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement
( )Information shared informally (without contracts) with people with the same institutional affiliation as the EFRC
( )Information shared formally (via contracts) with people with the same institutional affiliation as the EFRC
( )Information shared with students inside the EFRC institution

2. How does your EFRC share research and technology information externally?(Choose all that apply)

2.1 General information

( )Information shared with any interested person on demand
( )Information shared with broad public via public posting on the Internet
( )Information shared informally (without contracts) with people with a different institutional affiliation than your EFRC
( )Information shared formally (via contracts) with people with a different institutional affiliation than your EFRC

2.2 Through scholarly work: (Choose all that apply)

( )Publications/Journals

( ) open access

( ) closed access

( )Website of project

( ) open access

( ) closed access - only available to institution

( )Workshops
( )Consultancy

2.2 Through Intellectual Property management: (Choose all that apply)

( ) The research will be deliberately placed in the public domain
( ) We will use a traditional "all rights reserved" approach for our creative works (i.e. copyright protection and we intend to enforce it)
( ) We will seek patents on novel inventions
( ) We will use 'trade secrets' strategies to protect our Research
( ) We will use 'trademarks' as a protection strategy
( ) We will place the data we build and collect in open databases. List databases:_______
( ) We will place the data we build and collect in closed databases. List databases: _______
(Concepts: For the purposes of this questionnaire, an open database is a database with no - or almost no - restrictions on access and use by the broad public. A closed database is a database with protection measures for access and limited rights of use. For more on Open Access Databases see Science Commons Open Access Data Protocol)

Additional comments to your answer:
____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

Knowledge Output

1. What types of knowledge outputs does your EFRC produce? (Choose all that apply)

( ) Data - Please describe the type of data being produced:_____________
( ) Databases
( ) Research papers
( ) Unpatentable tools and/or materials. Give examples: ______
( ) Patentable tools and/or materials. Give examples: ______

2. What policies govern these knowledge outputs? (Choose all that apply)

( ) Institutional or EFRC formal Intellectual Property policy. Please provide a link or document with the policy. If a link, please insert here: ______________
( ) Institutional or EFRC formal Publication Policy. Please provide a link or document with the policy. If a link, please insert here: ______________
( ) Technology transfer office policies and guidelines - Please insert link here:___________________________________
( ) Other. Please describe: _____________

3. If the output of the research is copyrightable, which of the following licensing options would be used? (If these licenses are unfamiliar to you and/or you don't know the answer to the question, please try to consult someone from your Technology Transfer office or write to us at XXXX. Please do not guess.)

( ) All rights reserved
( ) Some rights reserved, with express-communicated license
( ) Creative Commons licenses
Possible Creative Commons (CC) Licenses:

( ) CC-BY (BY means Attribution must be given to creator)

( ) CC-BY-NC (NC means the output can only be used for Non-Commercial purposes)

( ) CC-BY-NC-ND (ND means that No Derivative works can be created from output, only verbatim copies)

( ) CC-BY-NC-SA (SA means that others can Share Alike derivative copies of the output but only under an identical CC license)

( ) CC-BY-ND (see definitions above)

( ) CC-BY-SA (see definitions above)

If you need more explanations on Creative Commons licenses, please, access [Creative Commons www.creativecommons.org]

( ) GNU General Public License (GPL), when the technology is software
( ) Berkeley Software Distribution license (BSD), when the technology is software
( ) Other. List: __________________________________________
( ) Declaration of resources in Open Access, but no express-communicated license

if you need more explanations on Open Access, please, access the Open Access Directory

( ) Institutional regulations on publication rights. Please provide a link or document with the policy or guidelines. If a link, please insert here: ______________
( ) Informal/Internal practices norms and regulations on publication rights. Please describe then here: ______________
( ) Regulations on citation rights
( ) No kind of assertion is made
( ) N/A

Please, provide any additional comment:
____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

4. If the output of the research is patentable, which of the following patenting options would be used? (Choose all applicable)

( ) Patent licensing with exclusivity.

If you chose this alternative, please, provide a brief explanation on when and why this licensing strategy is adopted: ___________________________________

( ) Patent licensing without exclusivity

If you chose this alternative, please, provide a brief explanation on when and why this licensing strategy is adopted: ___________________________________

( ) Trade secret licensing
( ) Adoption of some 'socially responsible licensing' scheme. Please, describe: ___________
( ) Adoption of open licensing - Examples may include:

( ) Creative Commons licenses (CC) - See Question 3 above

( ) GNU General Public Licenses (GPL)- See Question 3 above

( ) Berkeley Software Distribution licenses (BSD). - See Question 3 above

( ) Licensing with spacial condition for a set of actors or countries.

If you chose this alternative, please, provide a brief explanation on when and why this licensing strategy is adopted: ___________________________________

( ) "Patent-left" licenses
If you chose this alternative, please, provide a brief explanation on when and why this licensing strategy is adopted: ___________________________________
( ) Patent covenant / non-assertion commons
If you chose this alternative, please, provide a brief explanation on when and why this licensing strategy is adopted: ___________________________________
( ) Patent pool
( ) Other. List: __________________________________________
( ) No kind of assertion is made

5. How is the output of the research handled if it is not IP protected, but traditionally regulated by a contract, such as a Material Transfer Agreement?

( ) A Material Transfer Agreement is negotiated case by case
( ) The EFRC has a standard Material Transfer Agreement. Please, provide link to the agreement or a sample by email.
( ) Other. List: ____________________________________________________
( ) Subject to standard property and title laws, but the EFRC has a contract for use inspired by Free or Open Source Software licenses
( ) Attribution / Citation clauses/norms
( ) Non Commercial clauses
( ) Viral / Copyleft-inspired clauses (i.e. inspired by Creative Commons licenses or GPL explained above)
( ) No kind of assertion is made
( ) N/A

6. Is the technology being developed in your EFRC:

( ) a close 'substitute' technology to a technology that exists in the market? If yes, please, point here which technology your technology aims to substitute: ____________

( ) if substitute, do you expect your technology will be:

( ) more efficient. How much: ____ (in percentage)

( ) less costly. How much: ____ (in percentage)

( ) more efficient and less costly. How much: ____ (in percentage)

( ) N/A (it is difficult at this point to define efficiencies and cost issues)

( ) a 'complementary' technology to a technology that exists in the market? If yes, please, point here which technology your technology aims to complement: ____________
( ) a platform for other technologies to be developed upon it?

Knowledge Input

1. Did/do you need to license technologies to perform the research of your EFRC?
( )Yes
( )No

2. Was this difficult?
____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

3. Were you unable to license the technology?
( ) Yes
( ) No

4. If you could not license the technology did you:
( )Change the project?
( )Find another technology?
( )Find another licensor/partner?

5. What was the cost of licensing the technology?

( )High (price range goes here)
( )Medium (price range goes here)
( )Low (price range goes here)

Access

1. Are there clear rules on who can access the research and technology information?

( ) Yes, informally transmitted
( ) Yes, formally transmitted
( ) By a physical letter
( ) By an e-mail
( ) Published on the Center's web page. List URL: ___________________________________
( ) No

2. Is anonymous access to the Center's research and technology information allowed?

( ) Yes
( ) No

If Yes:

2.1 Does a user require an affiliation with the EFRC's home institution to access the resource?

( ) never
( ) sometimes
( ) regularly
( ) always

Additional comments to your answer:
____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

Use

1. Are there rules on who can use the research and technology information being developed in your EFRC?

( ) yes, informally transmitted
( ) yes, formally transmitted
( ) by a physical letter
( ) by an e-mail
( ) published on the Case web page. List URL: ___________________________________
( ) no

Community

1. Is there a community of practice being formed by your EFRC?

( )Yes
( )No

Additional comments to your answer:
____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

2. Is this community open to the public or just your host institution?

( ) Open to public
( ) Open to institution only
( ) Other (Please explain)

3. What are the formal community management tools in use? (Check all that apply)

( ) Wiki - Please list URL:____________________________
( ) Blog - Please list URL:____________________________
( ) Mailing list
( ) Social Network Platforms - Please list URL:____________________________
( ) P2P Network - Please list URL:____________________________
( ) Repository
( ) Web-site - Please list URL:____________________________
( ) VoIP
( ) Forums
( ) Chats
( ) Conference calls

Additional comments to your answer:
____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

4. Are there real-world community management tools implemented in parallel with the online tools to support the research of your EFRC? (Check all that apply)

( ) yes
( ) conferences
( ) association-related activities
( ) private meetings
( ) staff training
( ) participation in standards setting-bodies
( ) no

Capacity building outputs

1. Is there a course or curriculum that will be developed around the research conducted in your EFRC?

( ) Yes
( ) No

If "Yes," please explain:
____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

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