Social Studies of Science

Based on the curricula vitae and survey responses of 443 academic scientists affiliated with university research centers in the USA, we examine the longstanding assumption that research collaboration has a positive effect on publishing productivity. Since characteristics of the individual and the work environment are endogenously related to both collaboration and productivity, this study focuses on the mediating effect of collaboration on publishing productivity. By using the two-stage least squares analysis, the findings indicate that in the presence of moderating variables such as age, rank, grant, gender, marital status, family relations, citizenship, job satisfaction, perceived discrimination, and collaboration strategy, the simple number (‘normal count’) of peer-reviewed journal papers is strongly and significantly associated with the number of collaborators. However, the net impacts of collaboration are less clear. When we apply the same model and examine productivity by ‘fractional count’, dividing the number of publications by the number of authors, we find that number of collaborators is not a significant predictor of publishing productivity. In both cases, ‘normal count’ and ‘fractional count’, we find significant effects of research grants, citizenship, collaboration strategy, and scientific field. We believe that it is important to understand the effects of the individual and environmental factors for developing effective strategies to exploit the potential benefits of collaboration. We note that our focus is entirely at the individual level, and some of the most important benefits of collaboration may accrue to groups, institutions, and scientific fields.

Scientific and engineering research increasingly involves multidisciplinary collaboration, sometimes across multiple organizations. Technological advances have made such cross-boundary projects possible, yet they can carry high coordination costs. This study investigated scientific collaboration across disciplinary and university boundaries to understand the need for coordination in these collaborations and how different levels of coordination predicted success. We conducted a study of 62 scientific collaborations supported by a program of the US National Science Foundation in 1998 and 1999. Projects with principal investigators (PIs) in more disciplines reported as many positive outcomes as did projects involving fewer disciplines. By contrast, multi-university, rather than multidisciplinary, projects were problematic. Projects with PIs from more universities were significantly less well coordinated and reported fewer positive outcomes than projects with PIs from fewer universities. Coordination mechanisms that brought distant researchers together physically slightly reduced the negative impact of collaborations involving multiple universities. We discuss implications for theory, practice, and policy.

This essay is a call for research on the role of information and communication technology in distant lands. I address the globalization of science as a process by replacing the concept of development with the idea of reagency, a process of redirection involving a contingent reaction between identities. I focus on the Guest, an identity that assumes particular importance in relation to Hosts in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Following recent work that stresses the dependence of knowledge production on places, the Guest House is introduced as an architectural structure that crystallizes and reinforces a Guest/Host relationship that has developed during the aid era. The advent of the Internet offers the possibility of a change in the structure of science, with the inclusion of researchers in distant lands as full participants in global scientific communities. The principal issue is whether the connectivity initiative centering on the Internet is just another development program, like so many others that have come and gone, or whether it is different in character. Three empirical research questions are posed to assist in examining this question. A minor thread throughout the essay explains the author’s romantic interest in the subject, and his transition from a phony donor to a real one.

We examine the ways in which the research process differs in developed and developing areas by focusing on two questions. First, is collaboration associated with productivity? Second, is access to the Internet (specifically use of email) associated with reduced problems of collaboration? Recent analyses by Lee & Bozeman (2005) and Walsh & Maloney (2003) suggest affirmative answers to these questions for US scientists. Based on a comparative analysis of scientists in Ghana, Kenya, and the State of Kerala in south-western India (N 918), we find that: (1) collaboration is not associated with any general increment in productivity; and (2) while access to email does attenuate research problems, such difficulties are structured more by national and regional context than by the collaborative process itself. The interpretation of these results suggests a paradox that raises issues for future studies: those conditions that unsettle the relationship between collaboration and productivity in developing areas may undermine the collaborative benefits of new information and communication technologies.

This paper examines the tensions and paradoxes that arise during the life course of research groups as they strive to establish and maintain an identity, acquire and retain control of an ensemble of research technologies, and evaluate and choose the risks they are willing to accept in their work. My central aim is to rekindle interest in the ambivalences, tensions, and paradoxes of science by identifying and illustrating the tensions that characterize research groups. Among the questions of concern are: How does a group establish an independent identity while remaining connected with its field of research? How are consistency of focus and continuity of approach balanced against the freedom younger scientists need to develop as independent investigators? What varieties of risks are encountered in research and how are they evaluated and navigated? Based on intensive, repeated, face-to-face interviews with scientists at various levels of seniority at elite private and public universities, the paper examines the choices leaders make at these critical junctures and the consequences of those choices. Several sorts of tensions are examined, including autocracy versus democracy, varieties of risk, role conflicts, openness versus secrecy, competitive cooperation, ambivalences about priority claims, and balancing continuity and change, and their implications for science, scientists, and the research process are discussed.