Identifying the Most Important Factors Influencing the Future of University Research Policies: A Case Study of Seven Comprehensive Universities

"Research" at the university is one of the key pillars of community development and development, and is crucial to maintaining a competitive position at national and international levels.This study aimed to identify the most important factors affecting the future of research at seven comprehensive universities in the country: Tehran University, Tarbiat Modares University, Shahid Beheshti University, Tabriz University, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Isfahan University, and Shiraz University.The research was conducted with a futures research approach.To identify the primary influencing factors, environmental scanning method and interviews with experts in the three-month interval (April 15 to July 15, 2019) were used. In the first stage, 33 effective factors were identified. According to the experts' opinion, the 24 factors in the cross-Impact matrix were again sent back to the experts for weighting the factors. The results of MicMac analysis indicate the instability of the research system.Because most factors are scattered around the diameter of the plate. Of the five types of factors identifiable on the influence-dependence plate, only two types of bi-directional and independent factors have been identified.Three cases(incompatibility of upstream documents with university research capability, government funding constraint and research unnecessarity) were among the independent factors and 21 factors (interdisciplinary Sciences, international cooperation, university and industry cooperation, governments approach to Research, Knowledge Management Status, Belief in Research Benefits in solving Challenges, Research Infrastructures, Managers Attitudes, Culture-Building, Economic Prosperity, Non-Governmental Organizations Approaches, Research Network Status, Technologies Role, Industry Research Needs to Universities, By-Laws for Promotion and employing Faculty Members, Upstream Document Actions, Worldwide Research Image, Industry Mental Image of University efficacy, the impact of the international research status, the university mentality of industry acceptance, university research laws) are among the two factors.