Exploring Academic Scientific Productivity

This book aims at contributing to our understanding of the dynamics of academic scientific productivity through three complementary studies. First, it analyzes how personal and institutional characteristics condition the productivity of individual researchers. Then, the analysis moves beyond the individual level, recognizing that most scientific knowledge is produced by teams of researchers. Hence, a second focus is to investigate how the social capital that researchers build through their collaborations relates to their scientific productivity. The final study addresses tensions between the creation of new knowledge and the effort to disseminate and apply the knowledge in the market place. In particular, it investigates how entrepreneurial activities might affect the research productivity of the scientists turned entrepreneurs. The three studies address important public policy concerns related to scientific productivity and the development of science systems in general.