A NEW REWARD SYSTEM IN ACADEMIC SCIENCE?
This study addresses the following question: How does a commercially-oriented reward system operate in academic science? Since 1980, the erosion of boundaries between universities and industry has resulted in acceleration in the commercialization of scientific discoveries in the form of patents and companies generated by scientists in the academy. Whereas peer recognition of priority in discovery has traditionally been considered the chief reward for role performance, the ability to commercially-exploit scientific discovery has enabled financial rewards to play an equal and perhaps more powerful role as recognition in the system of rewards in academic science. Because commercialization is predicated on the privatization of knowledge and market-based evaluations of work, new norms of science have also likely emerged that may contradict traditional practices of community-shared, peer-evaluated contributions. Consequently, scientists in academe are exposed to different conceptions of the scientific role, occupational norms, and rewards for scientific conduct. To address this question, sixty interviews with academic scientists will be conducted at four universities. The study employs a theoretical sampling strategy that compares commercially-oriented scientists and non-commercial scientists at public and private universities, evenly divided between scientists who received their PhDs before and after the onset of commercialized academic science. Data will be analyzed to explain contemporary conceptions of the scientific role, motivations to commercialize science, the character of scientific norms, and the operation of the scientific reward system and its consequences. This research builds on existing analyses of the commercialization of academic science by examining the meanings scientists assign, and their motivations to engage in, commercial practices. Moreover, through inclusion of scientists who reject commercialization, it questions assumptions that commercialization is widely accepted or that traditional scientific norms are inoperative. Finally, the study will provide an account of the stability of the academic profession and attributes of universities that constrain and enable scientific achievement.
This study investigated academic scientists’ views of transforming academic research into technologies and commercial products. For centuries, academic scientists have performed their roles relatively independent of commercial incentives. In 1980, however, the US Congress passed legislation permitting academic scientists to commercialize the findings of their research. Specifically, congress passed laws that enabled scientists at universities to patent their findings, transform them into inventions, and either sell them to companies for profit or form companies themselves. The goal of this legislation was to accelerate innovation and economic development by removing barriers between academe and industry and fostering academic-industrial collaboration. This decision constituted a major transformation for university scientists. Traditionally, the primary role of the university scientist was to discover and explain truth about nature, train future scientists, and teach students. Scientists who made the most important scientific discoveries under this model were rewarded financially by their universities, but their primary reward came from the recognition of their peers. Ultimate achievement, for example, was rewarded with induction into national honor societies and through major prizes such as the Nobel Prize. The reward system in this model allocated the greatest rewards to scientists whose discoveries advanced knowledge by improving the ways in which scientists understand the natural world. Technologies such as the Internet, the discovery of DNA, and cell phones resulted from this model "accidentally", in the sense that the science that enabled their development resulted from basic research, the findings of which were transferred to federal or industrial labs for development into products. With the passage of legislation in 1980, commercial incentives entered the reward system in academic science alongside the role of peer recognition. Not only did this introduce new norms, or professional standards of conduct, into the work of university scientists, it influenced new incentives for scientists to select particular types of research problems. The intellectual motivation for the study was twofold. First, existing research on this topic has primarily focused on quantitative aspects of the commercialization of research. Such studies, for example, measured the quantity of patents universities produced or the extent to which such patents returned royalties to universities. Second, the views of scientists who do not commercialize their work have rarely been incorporated into existing scholarship. Until this study, social scientists lacked an understanding of the implications of commercialization for scientific work and the role of universities that was based on the views of the scientists who work in universities where commercialization is most prevalent. To contribute a new understanding of this phenomenon, the Co-principal investigator of this study conducted 62 interviews with scientists at two public and two private universities that were identified as among the top ten commercially-active universities in the United States. That is,, scientists at these institutions are among the most productive scientists in the world in terms of patents invented and companies formed. The participants in the study were evenly divided between scientists with extensive and no commercial involvement. Scientists were interviewed about their views of the scientific role, the circumstances of decisions surrounding commercialization, their views of the appropriate standards of scientific conduct, and the implications of these practices for scientists and universities. The findings of the study reveal that scientists support commercialization for three reasons. First, they believe that because they receive taxpayer funding, it is important to, when possible, deliver a societal impact in the form of solutions to major problems such as health and well-being, the environment, and economic development. Second, scientists believe that the public does not understand or appreciate their work and thus commercialization provides a way in which academic scientists can demonstrate their value to society. Third, and relatedly, scientists are concerned about the diminishing level of taxpayer funds for research on basic science. They thus embrace commercialization as a means to use patent royalties to fund further research. Both commercial and non-commercial scientists are, however, concerned about three problems presented by commercialization. First, they believe the emphasis on commercialization comes at the expense of basic science, which they generally view as the most important form of scientific work, even with respect to the technologies that ultimately come from it. Second, scientists are concerned that the emphasis on commercialization may potentially undermine the integrity of the academic profession. For example, a concern exists that as federal funding agencies emphasize the importance of technologies that can be disseminated into the market, the academic profession will no longer be viewed as objective arbiters of truth. Third, scientists are concerned that the emphasis on commercialization may negatively shape the operation of universities. Specifically, there is a concern that extensive commercial may interfere with commitments to training future scientists, teaching undergraduates, and performing basic university services.
