The overall goal of this research is to develop an improved understanding of university resource allocation in agricultural research by examining the ethics and values associated with research outputs (articles, patents, and doctorates), potential changes in the direction of and audience for scientific researchers (e.g., basic vs applied, firms for licensing vs broader public dissemination), and the observable quality of the research (in terms of citations, licensing revenues, or other measures). The project will examine the resource allocation process at the university level as well as at the level of individual researchers within the agricultural and life science colleges of U.S. Land Grant universities (LGU).
At the university level, the project is built on a 20-year panel database on university research inputs, outputs, and patent revenues that two of the principal investigators (Barham and Foltz) have developed over the past 4 years. At the individual level, the project will undertake a major survey of university researchers at LGUs asking them detailed questions about their research direction, outputs, grant sources, stakeholders, and attitudes. This survey of scientists follows up on a previous survey done by another of the principal investigators in the mid-1990s (Buttel) as well as an earlier effort by Lacy and Busch in 1979.
The research methods in this project advance the literature on academic patenting in a number of important ways. First, the theoretical framework, "motivation crowding," provides a novel framework for understanding how monetary incentives affect scientists' ethics, values, and research choices and the framework's use advances the theory by providing an empirical test of its propositions. Second, by building on past data collection efforts, this work will have both cross-section and time-series information that can advance our understanding of scientist ethics, values, and research choices. Third, this work will be able to integrate the scientist data with university level information across time and universities. Fourth, by having an interdisciplinary research team, this project will be able to combine the ethics and values concerns of sociology with the data and theory driven analytic tools of economists.
This project investigates a series of regulatory and legal changes that appear to be having a major impact on the way in which research is done at agricultural colleges in LGUs. The incentives created by university patenting are changing the ethics and values of scientists, the types of projects they choose, the outlets for their research, and how that research gets disseminated to the public (e.g., patents or open publications). Given the central role of public sector research to generating new agricultural technologies over the last century, these changes in LGU research focus and scientist values may have significant impacts on the long-term sustainability of US agriculture (Goldberger and Buttel, 2001).
A deeper understanding of resource allocation and outcomes in university research can contribute toward the design of better policies and incentive structures to promote agricultural and life science research at LGUs, including efficiency and equity outcomes. Findings from this study will be presented to key decision makers at Land Grant universities, in state legislatures, and to interdisciplinary audiences.
