Scientists’ collaboration strategies: implications for scientific and technical human capital

“Scientific and technical human capital” (S&T human capital) has been defined as the sum of researchers’ professional network ties and their technical skills and resources [Int. J. Technol. Manage. 22 (7-8) (2001) 636]. Our study focuses on one particular means by which scientists acquire and deploy S&T human capital, research collaboration. We examine data from 451 scientists and engineers at academic research centers in the United States. The chief focus is on scientists’ collaboration choices and strategies. Since we are particularly interested in S&T human capital, we pay special attention to strategies that involve mentoring graduate students and junior faculty and to collaborating with women. We also examine collaboration “cosmopolitanism,” the extent to which scientists collaborate with those around them (one’s research group, one’s university) as opposed to those more distant in geography or institutional setting (other universities, researchers in industry, researchers in other nations). Our findings indicate that those who pursue a “mentor” collaboration strategy are likely to be tenured; to collaborate with women; and to have a favorable view about industry and research on industrial applications. Regarding the number of reported collaborators, those who have larger grants have more collaborators. With respect to the percentage of female collaborators, we found, not surprisingly, that female scientists have a somewhat higher percentage (36%) of female collaborators, than males have (24%). There are great differences, however, according to rank, with non-tenure track females having 84% of their collaborations with females. Regarding collaboration cosmopolitanism, we find that most researchers are not particularly cosmopolitan in their selection of collaborators—they tend to work with the people in their own work group. More cosmopolitan collaborators tend have large grants. A major policy implication is that there is great variance in the extent to which collaborations seem to enhance or generate S&T human capital. Not all collaborations are equal with respect to their “public goods” implications.     

From consolidation to disruption: A novel way to measure the impact of scientists and identify laureates

This study proposes a novel approach for evaluating the impact of scientists by introducing a new set of metrics and a dual measurement framework that combines the concepts of disruption and consolidation. Traditional metrics like total citation and h-index are limited in their ability to capture the full range of a scientist's influence, and therefore the Scientists' Disruptive Citation (SDC), Disruptive h-index (D h-index), and consolidating metrics are introduced to provide a more comprehensive evaluation of scientists' disruptive and consolidating influence. Using a dataset of 463,348 papers, 234,086 disambiguated scientists, and data on three important awards, including Nobel Prize, Wolf Prize, and Dirac Medal, in the field of Physics, this study demonstrates that the SDC and D h-index are superior to all benchmark metrics, including the conventional and normalized disruption-based measures, in terms of convergent validity. Second, this study analyzes the distribution of academic characteristics between award-winning and non-laureates, explores various metrics of scientists with high SDC and Scientists' Consolidating Citation (SCC), and finds that disruptive impact can identify successful scientists from their counterparts and serve as an early signal of successful scientists. Third, this study reveals that the disruptive citation proposed in this study is less susceptible to manipulation, making it a more reliable metric for assessing a scientist's or a single paper's disruptive impact than the CD-index. The results suggest that the SDC and D h-index are reliable metrics for measuring scientists' innovative influence and can aid in the development of future scientific research. Overall, this study provides a scientifically sound and effective new perspective on measuring scientists using a dual measurement of disruptive and consolidating influence.     

A taste for science? PhD scientists’ academic orientation and self-selection into research careers in industry

Recent research on industrial and academic science draws on the notion that academically trained scientists have a strong “taste for science”. However, little attention has been paid to potential heterogeneity in researchers’ taste for science and to potential selection effects into careers in industry versus academia. Using survey data from over 400 science and engineering PhD students, we examine the extent to which PhD students’ taste for science (e.g., desire for independence, publishing, peer recognition, and interest in basic research) and other individual characteristics predict preferences for research careers in industry versus academia. Our results suggest that PhD students who prefer industrial employment show a weaker “taste for science”, a greater concern for salary and access to resources, and a stronger interest in downstream work compared to PhD students who prefer an academic career. Our findings have important implications for innovation research as well as for managers and policy makers.     

Learning-by-hiring: How do rival firms learn from focal firm's hiring

Previous studies provide evidence of learning from the mobility of scientists for the source and the hiring firms. However, we have a limited understanding of the competitive implications of such inter-firm mobility and associated learnings. Using a difference–in–difference approach on matched patents in the semiconductor industry in 1981–2010, we find that mobile scientists' patents receive more citations from rival firms after the mobility vis-à-vis before the mobility and vis-à-vis other similar patents. We conclude that rival firms respond to mobilities across other firms by attributing more attention to mobile scientists. Furthermore, the context of the mobility can determine the extent of response from rival firms. Rival firms are more likely to build on a mobile scientist's patents after mobility when the mobility occurs between technologically distant firms, the source firm or the hiring firm has low research experience, or the mobile scientist has considerable experience.     

Content-oriented or persona-oriented? A text analytics of endorsement strategies on public willingness to participate in citizen science

This paper applies text analytics to study how the orientation of an endorsement strategy affects the public's willingness to participate in citizen science projects. Using 850 citizen science projects with 1,243 endorsements from an online citizen science platform Experiment.com as corpus, the orientation of the endorsement strategies is detected using the naïve Bayesian inference model with a Laplace estimator. Our results inform that 39% of the endorsements are persona-oriented while 61% are content-oriented. A persona-oriented endorsement strategy draws more participants but reduces the per capita invested. A content-oriented endorsement strategy has the opposite effect. Further, the project initiator's identity strengthens or weakens the effect of the endorsement orientation strategy. In the number of participants model, the projects initiated by the professional scientists and research students are positively moderated by persona-orientation endorsements, whereas the projects initiated by the amateur researchers are negatively moderated. The converse holds for the per capita invested model.     

Academic scientists in corporate R&D: A theoretical model

What motivates some firms to hire star academics? This paper provides a theoretical framework that combines several factors known to influence a firm's hiring decision of scientists capable of conducting both, research and development activities. The targeted type, reflecting the scientist's academic ability, is endogenous. When research and development activities are not strong substitutes, the optimal contract induces the scientist to engage in multitasking and the firm targets applicants with either the highest or the lowest type. Scientist with the lowest ability to conduct academic research are hired in environments where investments in absorptive capacity have low returns, academic publications generate substantial negative externalities for the firm, and/or the academic sector offers desirable outside options. When academic ability is not verifiable, the contract must only appeal to scientists with the targeted ability. Top scientists may need to be overcompensated for their research outcomes while low ability scientists may be overly compensated for their development outcomes. This, in turn, leads the hiring decision to be biased in favour of high-ability scientists when research and development activities exhibit a strong complementarity. By opposition, scientists with the lowest ability are more frequently targeted when the cost of conducting both activities increases.     

Commercial science, scientists’ values, and university biotechnology research agendas

Policies designed to promote the commercialization of university science have provoked concern that basic and publicly accessible research may be neglected. Commercialization policies have altered traditional institutional incentives and constraints, which raises new questions regarding the influence of scientists’ values on university research agendas. Our research builds on previous quantitative studies measuring changes in research outcomes and qualitative studies probing differentiation among scientists’ value orientations. We developed a nation-wide survey of 912 plant and animal biotechnology scientists at 60 research universities. Our analysis reveals that scientists’ value orientations on what we classify as “market” and “expert” science affect the amount of industry funding they receive, the proprietary nature of their discoveries, and the percentage of basic science research conducted in their laboratories. We also find that the percentage of industry funding is significantly associated with more applied research. Our findings provide insights for science and society theory and suggest that strong incentives for public-science research along with adequate public-research funds to preserve the university's vital role in conducting basic and non-proprietary research are needed to complement private-sector research investments at universities.     

How do men and women differ in research collaborations? An analysis of the collaborative motives and strategies of academic researchers

Do men and women academic faculty vary in their research collaboration patterns and strategies? This straightforward question does not lend itself to a straightforward answer. A great many sex-correlated variables could possibly mitigate the relationship of sex and collaboration. If one finds sex-correlated differences in the number of collaborators, can one infer that there is something intrinsic to men's and women's work strategies and preferences? Or would such differences owe instead to women's and men's different positions in work structures and hierarchies? The focus here is on two sets of research collaboration variables, numbers of collaborators and the collaboration strategies employed. The study uses questionnaire data from the U.S. National Survey of Academic Scientists (n = 1714) and tests several hypotheses about collaboration numbers and strategies. Regression results indicate, counter to the core hypotheses and almost all published literature, that in a properly specified model, one taking into account such factors as tenure, discipline, family status and doctoral cohort, women actually have somewhat more collaborators on average than do men. For both men and women, those with more industrial interactions and those affiliated with university research centers have more collaborators. Men and women differ in their collaborator choice strategies. Men are more likely to be oriented to “instrumental,” and “experience” strategies, while both men and women are motivated by “mentoring” strategies. Regression analyses show that for both men and women, having a coherent collaborator choice strategy predicts the number of collaborators.     

The spill-over theory reversed: The impact of regional economies on the commercialization of university science

The concept of regional technology spill-overs created by university research is one of the most enduring theories within the economic geography and innovation management fields. This article introduces an alternative perspective on academic commercialization, arguing that the quality of a university's regional environment can significantly impact a university's success in commercializing science. Recent research on university technology transfer stresses the importance of personal contacts between academic and industry scientists in driving commercialization. The social structure of the regional economy in which a university is embedded will strongly influence the density of contacts linking university scientists with individuals in industry, and through doing so, impact the density of networks through which university knowledge can be commercialized. Social network analysis is used to examine the quality of social ties linking industry and university scientists within the San Francisco and Los Angeles California biotechnology industries over the 1980–2005 period. Results support the theory that the existence of strong social networks linking inventors heightens university commercialization output. Despite similar university research endowments, universities in San Francisco have dramatically commercialization outputs than San Francisco, which is correlated with the existence of cohesive inventor networks linking industry and university scientists in this region, but not Los Angeles. Moreover, longitudinal analysis shows that the commercialization output of San Francisco universities increased substantially starting in the early 1990s, the time period in which cohesive inventor networks emerged in the region.     

Not all scientists pay to be scientists: PhDs’ preferences for publishing in industrial employment

It is often assumed that academically trained scientists have a strong taste for science and are willing to “pay” for the ability to openly disclose their research results. However, little is known regarding how scientists considering jobs in industrial R&D make trade-offs between positions that allow publishing on the one hand and positions that do not allow publishing but offer higher pay on the other. Using data on over 1900 science and engineering PhD candidates about to enter the job market, we find that while some are unwilling to give up publishing at virtually any price, over one third of those most likely to seek positions in industrial research are willing to forego publishing for free. We develop a simple model of the “price” scientists assign to publishing in firms and explore potential sources of heterogeneity empirically. We find that the price of publishing increases with individuals’ preferences for various benefits from publishing such as peer recognition and contributing to society, but it decreases with their preference for money. Scientists who believe themselves to be of high ability and who train at top tier institutions have a higher price of publishing. Yet, they are more expensive to hire (not less) even if publishing is allowed. We discuss implications for research on the economics of science and on compensating differentials, for managers seeking to attract and retain academically trained personnel, and for firms considering their participation in open science.     

How do collaborations with universities affect firms’ innovative performance? The role of “Pasteur scientists” in the advanced materials field

This article aimed to identify the effect of university-industry (U-I) collaborations on the innovative performance of firms operating in the advanced materials field, and by doing so, it proposed an original classification of the research organization partners. The main contribution resides in the estimation of the role played by collaborations with differently experienced scientists. In contrast with previous studies, whose empirical setting was the life science industry, in the advanced materials industry the most effective collaborations are not with “Star scientists”, but with “Pasteur scientists”. The latter concept was empirically tested first by the authors of this article, to deepen the present understanding of industrial heterogeneity in innovation processes and to offer new insights for the formulation of corporate innovation strategies. The results of the estimation of a negative binomial regression model applied to a sample of 455 firms active in the photocatalysis in Japan confirm the idea that engaging in research collaborations, measured as co-invention, with “Pasteur scientists” increases firms’ R&D productivity, measured as number of registered patents. In contrast, we found that firms’ collaborations with “Star scientists” exert little impact on their innovative output.     

Superfluid helium nanodroplets: 2006 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics presented to Giacinto Scoles and J. Peter Toennies

At very low temperatures, helium becomes superfluid, with properties significantly different from those of familiar substances. Although superfluid helium has been the subject of extensive investigations, until recently no practical applications have been found that would utilize its unusual properties. The main reason was that macroscopic samples of superfluid helium expel all other atoms or molecules. Only in the 1990s, Scoles and collaborators demonstrated that one can embed “impurities”, atoms and molecules, in low-temperature helium if it is in the form of small droplets. Such droplets contain only a few thousands atoms and therefore are called “nanodroplets”. Furthermore, Scoles and coworkers were able to measure spectra of the impurities. Subsequently, Toennies and collaborators have found that the spectral lines are very sharp, almost as sharp as in the gas phase, and demonstrated that this sharpness has to be due to the superfluidity of helium in the nanodroplets. The newly created technique of helium-nanodroplet spectroscopy allowed investigations of molecules or clusters that are unstable in gas phase and has significantly increased our understanding of superfluid helium at microscopic level.     

Professional guilds, tension and knowledge management

Scientific research is a crucial success factor for knowledge intensive firms and is often a joint effort of scientists and managers. However, scientists and managers belong to different “professional guilds,” subscribing to different belief systems and valuing different types of incentives. These differences give rise to tension between scientists and managers. We integrate a large body of literature from knowledge management to develop a new theoretical model predicting that this organizational tension is affected by environmental factors such as the degree of industry munificence, firm-specific factors like knowledge-management policies, and the individual roles of boundary spanners within the firm. Further, we argue that this tension can lead to positive or negative outcomes.     

Local peer communities and future academic success of Ph.D. candidates

Compared to senior scientists, early-career scientists have largely been neglected in the literature on academic success. This study aims to identify the effects of local peer communities of Ph.D. candidates on their future careers. We argue that local communities of Ph.D. candidates may offer both supportive and competitive environments depending on the nature of the relationships between its members. While Ph.D. candidates generally learn from and support each other in their local peer communities, they may also compete for their mentor's attention and future academic positions. We analyse such complex peer effects for 90,264 Ph.D. candidates in the field of mathematics in a genealogical way, by measuring a candidate's academic career success by the number of next-generation Ph.D. candidates supervised later on. To capture both the supportive and competitive peer effects, we distinguish between local peers who share mentors (co-mentees) and other local peers. Our result suggests that competition exists primarily among peers who share mentors, and only at the start of one's career. We also find supportive effects among peers who do not share mentors, particularly those from the same cohort. Our results highlight the importance of universities supporting informal interactions among Ph.D. candidates.     

The influence of Taylor’s paper, Question-Negotiation and Information-Seeking in Libraries

This study uses bibliometric analysis and citation context analysis to identify the influence of the main concepts embedded in Taylor’s 1968 classic article entitled Question-Negotiation and Information-Seeking in Libraries. This study analyses articles published between 1969 and 2010 which cite Taylor’s article. The results show that Taylor’s article on a question-negotiation model is increasingly visible and its influence is not limited to the discipline of library and information science. Of the 14 cited concepts identified, the concept of “four levels of information needs” was cited most (31.7%), followed by “question negotiation” (20.5%) and “other concepts relating to information needs” (17.9%). The results indicate an increasing trend in the citations of “four levels of information needs” and this concept also received the most attention from information retrieval research. A decreasing trend was evident for the concept of “question negotiation” and this concept was frequently cited by reference service researchers. In addition, among the 10 citation functions, “related literature” was dominant (30.8%). Both “evidence” and “views” were in second place with the same percentage (18.7%), followed by “terms” (9.2%) and “background information” (7.2%). A decreasing trend was identified in the top three citation functions, whereas an increasing trend was observed in the “term” and “background information” functions.     

Resources and research: An empirical study of the influence of departmental research resources on individual STEM researchers involvement with industry

This paper investigates the influence of departmental level characteristics and resources on individual involvement with industry using a national survey of STEM faculty. An integrative model of industry involvement is developed and tested that integrates a multi-level perspective on university–industry relations. Three measures of industry involvement are tested: the amount of time a researcher spends with industry, the number of activities a researcher engages in, and the intensity of those activities. Results of the model show that the quality of human capital in a researcher's home department is a significant influence on industry involvement. Non-federal R&D expenditures and direct industry funding also positively increase the likelihood of industry involvement. Policy and managerial implications of the results are discussed.     

Impacts of grants and contracts on academic researchers’ interactions with industry

Based on a representative national sample of 1564 academic researchers, we investigate the impacts of research grants and contracts on the nature and extent of faculty research and technology activities with industry. A particular focus is on understanding the independent contributions of industry and government grant sources on levels of industrial involvement. In addition to examining the source of grants, the study controls for a number of independent factors including: scientific field, research center affiliation, tenure status, and gender. Results suggest independent effects of grants and contracts on industrial activities. Grants and contracts from industry have a significant effect on academic researchers’ propensity to work with industry, as measured by an “industrial involvement scale.” Federally-sponsored grants also have an impact in increasing work with industry, but a more moderate one. Further, those with more grants and contracts (of each type) have a greater propensity for industrial involvement than those who have such contracts but fewer. This holds even when proxies for productivity and career stage are introduced in regression equations. The analysis also considers whether provision of grants and contracts is best viewed as a predictor of industrial involvement or just another type of industrial involvement using factor analysis and nested multivariate modeling to compare effects.     

The role of corporate scientists in innovation

We conducted empirical analysis of the role of corporate scientists in Japanese pharmaceutical companies using data on published papers and patent applications. We found that scientists with the highest publication performance scores did not apply for a considerably greater number of patents than other researchers in their companies. Instead, we found that these “core scientists” had a positive effect on the number of patent applications filed by their co-authors. Our findings suggest that core scientists play an important role as central conduits for the in-flow of knowledge from outside their companies, thereby stimulating innovation.     

The relationship between interdisciplinarity and distinct modes of university-industry interaction

Interdisciplinary research (IDR) has raised increasing expectations among scholars and policymakers about its potential to produce ground-breaking scientific contributions and satisfy societal demands. While existing research highlights that novel connections across fields is beneficial for scientific contributions with high academic impact, comparatively less is known about whether IDR is positively associated to scientists’ engagement with non-academic actors. To investigate this, we examine whether there is a systematic relationship between scientists’ IDR-orientation and their interactions with industry. We conceptually distinguish four stylized modes of interaction (firm creation, technology transfer, co-production and response modes) and employ three distinct indicators of IDR. We use data on 1,170 scientists affiliated to public research organizations in Spain, bibliometric dataset of scientists’ publications, and details of scientists’ past involvement in interactions with industry. Our results show that IDR has a transversal influence on all four modes. However, IDR-oriented scientists are more strongly associated to transactional (market-mediated) compared to relational (personal-based) interaction mechanisms; while we find no evidence of a significant difference between IDR-oriented scientists and their propensity to engage in different modes of U-I interaction according to the degree of goal specificity.     

Founders’ human capital and the growth of new technology-based firms: A competence-based view

In this paper, we analyze empirically the relation between the growth of new technology-based firms and the human capital of founders, with the aim of teasing out the “wealth” and “capability” effects of human capital. For this purpose, we take advantage of a new data set relating to a sample composed of 506 Italian young firms that operate in high-tech industries in both manufacturing and services. In accordance with competence-based theories, the econometric estimates show that the nature of the education and of the prior work experience of founders exerts a key influence on growth. In fact, founders’ years of university education in economic and managerial fields and to a lesser extent in scientific and technical fields positively affect growth while education in other fields does not. Similarly prior work experience in the same industry of the new firm is positively associated with growth while prior work experience in other industries is not. Furthermore, it is the technical work experience of founders as opposed to their commercial work experience that determines growth. The fact that within the founding team there are individuals with prior entrepreneurial experiences also results in superior growth. Lastly, we provide evidence that there are synergistic gains from the combination of the complementary capabilities of founders relating to (i) economic-managerial and scientific-technical education and (ii) technical and commercial industry-specific work experiences. We conclude that the human capital of founders of new technology-based firms is not just a proxy for personal wealth.