COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Research funding, organizational context, and transformative research: New insights from new methods and data

研究经费的一个主要目标是支持变革性科学。然而，实现这一目标的一个挑战是确定什么样的研究资金将导致这种转变。这项工作考察了资金在多大程度上改变了进行研究的组织环境，以及这如何刺激了变革性的科学。这项工作的结果将有助于通过建立对激励创新的团队规模、组成、资历和性别等组织因素的更好理解，为科学和创新政策的实践提供信息。由此产生的实际见解应有助于了解如何将资金用于支持协作网络和支持初级和女性科学家的职业生涯。将通过创新和科学研究所的虚拟数据飞地和联邦统计研究数据中心访问；这项工作应成为正在制定其职业研究议程的初级研究人员的磁石。新的纵向数据集包含关于研究科学家、他们的组织、他们的职业轨迹和他们的生产力--特别是他们的专利活动--的信息，使分析成为可能。一项重大创新是一种新方法，它通过捕捉专利中的新想法使现有工作过时的程度来衡量变革性。新数据和新方法的结合被用来(1)描述进行研究的更广泛的正式和非正式背景，(2)描述转型研究的特征，以及(3)描述两者之间的联系。计量经济学方法利用两种新的工具-机构内外潜在合作者的地理和组织分布的准随机变化-来控制潜在选择和其他混淆因素。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

A major goal of research funding is to support transformative science. A challenge to achieving this goal, however, is determining what kinds of research funding will lead to such transformations. This work examines the extent to which funding acts to change the organizational context within which research takes place and how that stimulates transformative science. The results of this work will help inform the practice of both science and innovation policy by building better understanding of such organizational factors as team size, composition, seniority and gender in stimulating innovation. The resulting practical insights should help inform how to direct funding to support collaborative networks and support the careers of junior and female scientists. Access will be available through both the Virtual Data Enclave at the Institute for Research on Innovation and Science and the Federal Statistical Research Data Centers; the work should act as magnet for junior researchers who are developing their career research agendas.The analysis is made possible by a new longitudinal dataset containing information about research scientists, their organizations, their career trajectories and their productivity--particularly their patenting activity. A major innovation is a new method that measures transformativeness by capturing the degree to which new ideas in the patents make existing work obsolete. The combination of the new data and new methods are used to (1) describe the broader formal and informal context within which research takes place, (2) characterize transformational research, and (3) describe the link between the two. The econometric approach makes use of two novel instruments - quasi-random variation in the geographic and organizational distribution of potential collaborators both within and outside of an institution - to control for potential selection and other confounding factors.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.