When an academic inventor presents their invention to the tech transfer office at the school where they work, the licensing officers analyze whether it would be attractive for licensing. If it doesn’t give a commercial entity a competitive advantage in their field, it is unlikely to be a candidate for commercial development, so it wouldn’t make sense for the tech transfer office to patent that invention. If it doesn’t get patented, it becomes freely available to the world when the inventor publishes their work outlining the invention.
If an invention is deemed to be viable because it offers a competitive advantage that makes it valuable, a patent application should be filed before the investigator submits articles about it for publication in scientific literature. That can sometimes create conflict, especially if the investigator is in a highly competitive field and competitors are nipping at his heels. The first one to publish is the one who is remembered.