Abstract:
We present preliminary results from a survey of 7,611 academic researchers across multiple fields in the US, Germany and Switzerland. The survey covers pre-publication sharing of research results, competition, norms of science, commercial orientation and size of research group. Results are presented across two related topics. Part I: We report the extent to which researchers report public (general) sharing of results prior to publication, and at what stage they share. Depending on their willingness to generally share and their propensity to withhold crucial parts respondents are divided into three types: sharers, ambivalent sharers and non-sharers. These are, respectively, 23.9%, 38.9%, and 37.2% of respondents. We estimate a probability model to examine the extent to which a belief that the norms of science hold in one’s area, competition and commercial orientation explain these field differences.
Part II: Recent research has considered the effect of team size on research productivity (citations, publications and patents). That work has typically focused on a single measure of team size (e.g., number of coauthors) and has failed to account for the endogeneity that exists between measures of research productivity and team size. We measure team size by number of coauthors, number in one’s research group, and number of groups worldwide in which there are collaborators. All three team size measures are found to be endogenous and instrumental variables estimation is used.