Purpose – The recent increase in patenting by European and American university researchers has raised concerns by observers asking whether increased patenting is associated with less open publication of their research results. This leads us to examine if the propensity to academic patenting would affect publication of scientific research results and, therefore, cause a lower diffusion of knowledge resources; or, conversely, if it could improve academic performances by increasing quantity and quality of scientific publications. Design/methodology/approach – We propose a quantitative approach through which we aim to test whether academic researchers who both publish and patent are less productive than their peers who concentrate exclusively on scholarly publication in order to communicate their research results. More specifically, by using the statistical model of comparison between sample means ̶ we analyse if the average number of academic inventors publications is lower than those of non-academic ones. We use a panel dataset comprising Italian academic researchers who have obtained the National Scientific Qualification as full professor in the sector “02/B3 ̶ Applied Physics”, in the session 2012. Originality/value – With regard to the relationship between patenting and publishing by university researchers there is not an unanimous doctrinal orientation. Additionally, there is only limited empirical evidence regarding the correlation between these two variables. Our study contributes to the existing literature by supporting the thesis according to which the open publication of university research results is not inhibited by patenting by university faculty members. Practical implications – The outcomes of the application suggest that it would appear appropriate to encourage a greater use of patents by university researchers. It would seem, in fact, that ̶ thanks to the financial support to academic research and, in general, to the incentives arising from contact with industry ̶ the development of industrial applications is likely to produce an additional stream of results, which are relevant also in the eyes of the scientific community. These observations allow us to assert that patents could be recognized as efficient indicators of knowledge production.