Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the main factors affecting researcher engagement in knowledge transfer exchanges (KTE) in an Open Innovation (OI) context, devoting special attention to specific factors such as personal and professional profile, institutional variables, social networks and recognition.Design/methodology/approach: An extensive literature review was conducted, focusing on current studies concerning the OI concept and research lines, OI and universities, KTE, and the factors affecting researcher engagement in university KTE. Based on this review a conceptual framework was proposed, including four main factors that affect KTE researcher engagement (personal and professional, institutional, social networks and recognition). The assumptions of this framework were explored in an empirical study involving 382 senior researchers, acting as leaders of different research groups, at Spanish universities. This was followed by univariate, bivariate and multivariate statistical analysis.Findings: Results show that, apart from recognition, most of the proposed factors affect researcher engagement in KTE processes. The social network factors appear to be the most important, as all items were significant in affecting the engagement of researchers in these processes.Research limitations/implications: Both the study and the statistical analysis are exploratory, therefore results should be treated with caution. Moreover, the data were collected from only one country, hence, in order to improve validity, additional data would be needed.Practical implications: Social networks (between researchers, businesses, university administrators, University Technology Transfer Office directors, etc.) should be promoted in order to improve researcher involvement in university KTE in an OI context.Originality/value: There is a lack of research literature discussing factors affecting researcher engagement in KTE processes. Moreover, researcher involvement is a key factor in contributing to the success of KTE. This paper provides a thorough discussion of these factors and proposes a conceptual framework with which they may be studied in the context of OI.