With the aim of making public research organizations (PROs) to contribute more to economic development, in the last three decades universities all around the world have been encouraged to valorize their research results by national and regional governments. University basic research is valor-ized once it attracts the industry attention and is developed into new tech-nologies for commercial and industrial use (Ho et al., 2013). There exist many channels through which a university invention can be transferred to the industry, some formal and other more informal (Mowery et al., 2001; Mowery, Shane, 2002; Siegel et al., 2003; Grimpe, Fier, 2010; Grimpe, Hussinger, 2013). The main focus of this paper is on technology transfer through publication versus formal licensing contracts.