Universities as knowledge producers for economic development

This research started from published studies about the importance of universities as generators of scientific and technological knowledge. From this understanding we identified a gap in the study of the scientific production of Brazilian universities. Thus we attempted to map the characteristics of Brazilian public universities in order to identify the allocation of human and financial resources in the generation of knowledge and the scientific production of research groups from universities. Initially it was identified that public universities are the main producers of scientific research in Brazil. As there is a high concentration of public universities in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais we decided to begin the process of mapping the production of knowledge in universities from this state of the republic.