How Do Career Strategies,Gender, and Work Environment Affect Faculty Productivity Levels in University‐Based Science Centers?1

Recent studies have shown that in many science and engineering fields, almost 40% of faculty are affiliated with university‐based research centers ( Corley & Gaughan, 2005 ). As major science funding organizations continue to increase annual levels of funding for interdisciplinary science centers, it is likely that this number will increase significantly over the next decade. Moreover, some scholars have argued that the rise of university‐based science centers has already led to the development of a new institutional form for the execution of university‐based research ( Bozeman & Boardman, 2004 ). Yet, interestingly few researchers have studied the impacts of this new institutional form on the productivity of individual researchers. The purpose of this article is to begin to address how individual career strategies and perceptions of scientific work environments within university‐based science centers relate to the productivity of academic scientists who participate in these centers. In particular, this article investigates the relationships between productivity, individual career strategies, and perceptions of scientific work environment across gender. The results of the study demonstrate that university‐based science centers might serve as an equalizing mechanism for male and female productivity levels. Yet, women scientists affiliated with these centers are significantly more likely to feel discriminated against—and they are less likely to embrace the most promising career strategy for the current structure of these centers.     

Government and Science: A Troubled, Critical Relationship and What Can Be Done about It

The U.S. government–science relationship, which helped win World War II, put a man on the moon, unravel the human genome, and nurture economic growth, is troubled. Money is one reason. However, far more than funding, the tensions between government and science are about politics and policy management. Many scientists and their allies argue that the Bush administration has crossed the line separating appropriate control of information from political interference. That is, there has been a "politicization of science." This essay examines the current debate about politicization in historical context; discusses the tensions among scientists, politicians, and administrators; and suggests possible ways to strengthen the government–science partnership in the future.     

POLICY RESEARCH AS SOCIAL SCIENCE: OUTFLANKING THE VALUE DILEMMA

Social scientists fear that policy research compromises their objectivity. As a result, policy science is becoming a separate discipline which is accorded lower status that other fields of social inquiry. However, the history, sociology and psychology of science show that the elaboration of robust social theory would be aided by a more intimate relation between policy research and academic social science than currently obtains. The traditional canons of value freedom, which have been invoked to justify the independence of social science from policy, misrepresent the relation between facts and values in science. Objective knowledge is consequent on dispute and triangulation by a many-valued community of fallible social scientists; but it does not eventuate from consensual value neutralism. Social knowledge interacts with social values to change phenomena our theories represent. This self-restructuring characteristic of social events warrants singular attention by social scientists. Policy researchers are in a particularly opportune position to provide that attention.     

Comparative Journal Ratings: A Survey Report

The expert survey and bibliometric methods of assessing the quality of work in political science are complementary. This project builds on previous surveys of academic political science journals conducted among US political scientists. The current wave extends the survey to political scientists in Canada and the UK. Preliminary results suggest both similarities and differences across the three countries. These results matter for policy debate in any country that is considering channelling flows of funds to universities in proportion to the quality of their research, and in helping to supply objective evidence about the research quality of work submitted by candidates for academic appointments and promotions.     

Growing Stem Cells: The Impact of Federal Funding Policy on the U.S. Scientific Frontier

This paper articulates a citation‐based approach to science policy evaluation and employs that approach to investigate the impact of the United States’ 2001 policy regarding the federal funding of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research. We evaluate the impact of the policy on the level of U.S. hESC research, the U.S. position at the knowledge frontier, and the strategic response of U.S. scientists. Consistent with recent research on the science of science and innovation policy, we employ a difference‐in‐differences approach using bibliometric data with the aim of analyzing the causal impact of the policy on cumulative research. Our estimates suggest that in the aftermath of the 2001 policy, U.S. production of hESC research lagged 35 to 40 percent behind anticipated levels. However, this relative decline was largely concentrated in the years 2001 to 2003 and ameliorated over time. The rebound in U.S. hESC research after 2003 was driven by contributions by researchers at elite U.S. institutions and U.S. researchers who collaborated with international partners. The results suggest that scientists respond strategically to research funding restrictions and that modest science policy shifts can have a significant influence on the within‐country composition of research and the pattern of global research collaboration.     

Metaphor, Intertextuality, and the Post–War Consensus

The idea of a once 'postwar consensus', between the Labour and Conservative parties, has become a commonplace in the academic literature of British political science. Here, I intend to briefly consider two aspects of this. I want to look at how the phrase 'postwar consensus' is used in a rather loose and indeterminate metaphorical fashion; and how the idea remains something of an intertextual construct rather than being a more fully developed social scientific argument. The simple moral or lesson being that social scientists require to be highly circumspect with regard to the subsumption of broad extents of time and/or space under some all-embracing catch-all label or designation.     

Introduction: The Future of British Political History

Politics and history are closely intertwined and historians play a vital role in British public life. Yet, British political history, which has a critical contribution to make for understanding British politics today, faces two urgent challenges. First, academic history has retreated from subjects that remain hugely popular in media and trade publishing and of interest to social scientists, such as the histories of political institutions and formal power structures. Second, political history is disconnected from innovative trends in the wider historiography of modern Britain. Combined, these issues leave political historians in an ambiguous position in relation to the wider field, to other academic disciplines and to contemporary political debates. After discussing these challenges, this introduction surveys this special issue, which reflects on what (if anything) is distinctive about political history as practised today, and what its contribution to historiography, social science and public life should be. It ends by posing key questions for historians of all methodological stripes who investigate Britain's political past.     

The development of political science in Lithuania: Years of the breakthrough

Abstract. The development of political science was closely connected to the democratic changes and the restoration of statehood at the end of the 1980s in Lithuania. This paper examines the historical and contemporary social and academic roots of political science in the country. The other issue investigated in detail is the institutionalisation of political studies, which required the development of new academic curricula. Major vehicles for the institutionalization of political science were the decentralisation of academic activities and the establishment of new institutions, such as the Institute of Political Science and International Relations (University of Vilnius) and the Lithuanian Political Science Association, and intensive cooperation withWestern universities and funding organizations. Nonetheless, the growth and efficiency of political studies and research depend very much on their successful integration into the environment of the existing universities. The research output of Lithuanian political science is characterised by a widening of research interests and the further introduction of statistical and computer methods of investigation, with problems of Lithuania's foreign and security policy and issues of democratisation as topics of continuing popularity.     

The development of political science in Bulgaria: A discipline in transition

Abstract. After the radical political changes of 1989, new possibilities for the development of political science appeared in Bulgaria. The discipline went through its own transitional periods. The first was the legitimisation of political science and its institutionalisation in the major academic institutions. The second, which remains at an early stage, is the establishment of a community of scholars and university staff with the necessary theoretical knowledge and resources for assuring its development. Of the major challenges which political science is facing today, one is the need to ensure the expansion of the community of scholars who are sufficiently familiar with recent developments in the discipline. Another is the need to overcome the politicisation of the discipline which was typical of many social scientists (and especially political scientists) at the beginning of the period of change. To an increasing extent, political science is not merely a product of democracy but also one of the major scientific resources for achieving its consolidation.     

The Reputation of Political Science Journals: Pluralist and Consensus Views

Individual scholars and their departments are increasingly judged according to the alleged 'quality' of the academic journals in which they publish. This article is the first systematic attempt to measure the reputation of political science journals and is designed for comparison with American academics' evaluations. It explores academics' criteria for judging journals, the consensus of judgement on any one journal across different criteria. and the range of evaluations between different journals. A relatively strong consensus is found among academic political scientists about the relative quality of political science journals. Nevertheless the order of the ranking depends, in part, on the measure adopted. Ranking by impact scores supports the consensus theory, while the rankings by quality lend some weight to the pluralist argument that specialist journals can be highly rated by small groups of experts while having little impact in the profession as a whole. Striking contrasts between the British and American political science communities are revealed.     

Political science and public choice: 1950–70

The early contributors to Public Choice did not find a sympathetic reception among political scientists. During the years 1950-70, political scientists were either indifferent to or hostile to the emerging field of rational choice in which the approach and tools of economics are applied to politics. In the essay that follows I attempt to explain this situation and why another revolution – the behavioral – dominated political science for more than twenty years. Despite the prominence of rational choice in some political science journals, that dominance continues, a matter I hope to address in a subsequent article.     

The Social Capital of Global Ties in Science: The Added Value of International Collaboration

The globalization of science is demonstrated in the mobility of scientists across national boundaries, the composition of the U.S. scientific workforce, and increased collaboration across national boundaries. While studies based on bibliometric and other data have been useful in identifying trends, collaborative clusters, and other patterns in international collaboration, they do not reveal the social dynamics behind those collaborations. This paper addresses the human and social capital factors that explain whether or not an academic researcher in science and engineering has an international collaborator. Further, through detailed statistical models, the analysis also addresses the factors that differentiate the specific resources derived from those international ties. Results show that non‐U.S. citizens are more likely to have close international collaborators, but that a range of factors explain this relationship. Further, results show that U.S. academic faculty mobilize different collaborative resources from international collaborators, versus their domestic collaborators.     

Gradgrinding the Social Sciences: The Politics of Metrics of Political Science

This article employs an interpretive approach, and in the light of contributions to this symposium by Butler and McAllister, and McLean et al ., holds that metrics of research 'quality' are socially constructed and hence are as 'subjective' as peer review. Thus it rejects the use of stand-alone metrics as an 'objective' basis to inform funding allocations. Rather, the optimum method of 'quality' assessment is a panel-based exercise with expert judgement informed by a range of discipline-sensitive metrics and peer review of publications. The article maintains that the politics of metrics of political science conceals interests about the foundations of social scientific knowledge, and so the dispute over metrics and peer review is a metaphor for the conflicting epistemological preferences of UK political scientists. It is also argued that metrics-led assessment subjects political science to 'Gradgrinding' on two fronts: that political science departments amount to less than the sum of their parts, and the audit culture strips the discipline of its humanism.     

A Global Ranking of Political Science Departments

Rankings of academic institutions are key information tools for universities, funding agencies, students and faculty. The main method for ranking departments in political science, through peer evaluations, is subjective, biased towards established institutions, and costly in terms of time and money. The alternative method, based on supposedly 'objective' measures of outputs in scientific journals, has thus far only been applied narrowly in political science, using publications in a small number of US-based journals. An alternative method is proposed in this paper – that of ranking departments based on the quantity and impact of their publications in the 63 main political science journals in a given five-year period. The result is a series of global and easily updatable rankings that compare well with results produced by applying a similar method in economics.     

Does Targeted,Disease‐Specific Public Research Funding Influence Pharmaceutical Innovation?

Public funding for biomedical research is often justified as a means to encourage development of more (and better) treatments for disease. However, few studies have investigated the relationship between these expenditures and downstream pharmaceutical innovation. In particular, although recent analyses have shown a clear contribution of federally funded research to drug development, there exists little evidence to suggest that increasing targeted public research funding for any specific disease will result in increased development of drugs to treat that disease. This paper evaluates the impact of changes in the allocation of U. S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) extramural research grant funding across diseases on the number of drugs entering clinical testing to treat those diseases, using new longitudinal data on NIH extramural research grants awarded by disease for years 1975 through 2006. Results from a variety of distributed lag models indicate that a sustained 10 percent increase in targeted, disease-specific NIH funding yields approximately a 4. 5 percent increase in the number of related drugs entering clinical testing (phase I trials) after a lag of up to 12 years, reflecting the continuing influence of NIH funding on discovery and testing of new molecular entities. In contrast, we do not see evidence that increases in NIH extramural grant funding for research focused on specific diseases will increase the number of related treatments investigated in the more expensive, late-stage (phase III) trials.     

Strategic Ignorance and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Critiquing the Discursive Segregation of UFOs from Scientific Inquiry

Since the late 1940s, a tenacious disconnect between popular interest and professional disinterest in unidentified flying objects (UFOs) has typified the controversy surrounding the subject. Numerous high-profile scientists have seen the topic of UFOs as an opportunity to denounce and rectify a popular, yet allegedly misguided, conviction—that some UFOs are physical anomalies indicating the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence—and thus to advance the explanatory authority of science. Rather than constituting rigorous, informed, and effective assessments, however, the ways in which many prominent scientists publicly address the UFO question often exemplify both the problematic “boundary-work” of scientific discourse in this area and, more specifically, the role that logical fallacies can play in the rhetorical construction of scientific authority in public domains. Through a critical discourse analysis, this article argues that ignorance of UFO phenomena is socially and discursively constructed in ways that are conducive to the public faces of individuals and institutions. More broadly, it suggests that the rudimentary standard of science communication attending to the extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) hypothesis for UFOs inhibits public understanding of science, dissuades academic inquiry within the physical and social sciences, and undermines progressive space policy initiatives.     

Allocating resources among AIDS research strategies

One of the central questions facing policy-makers is how to allocate limited federal funds among alternative AIDS research strategies. A rational answer requires judgments about both the prospects of scientific progress and the societal value of research outcomes. Using a decision-analytic approach, this paper examines the marginal returns from additional funding of basic biology, epidemiology and mathematical modeling, vaccine development and testing, treatment development and testing, and behavioral and social science. A survey of a recent Institute of Medicine Committee on AIDS was conducted to elicit scientific judgments on the prospects for scientific progress in each of the five areas. The scientists were quite capable of transcending their disciplinary orientation as reflected in the dominant sentiment in favor of more behavioral and social science research. A comparison of the actual FY 1987 AIDS research budget with the budgets recommended by the scientific experts also suggests that basic biological research deserves greater emphasis.This research was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in the form of a grant to the Health Science Policy Working Group of the Harvard Division on Health Policy, Research and Education.