Using Publication, Patent, and NSF Grant Data Linked to the Survey of Doctorate Recipients to Understand Science Career Trajectories

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Scientists receiving research funding from the federal government use it to produce scientific discoveries that are disseminated as research papers and inventions that become patented. Few data sources link scientists to their scholarly output as measured by federal research grants, publications, and patents. As a result, there is a limited understanding of the impact of publications, patents, and NSF grants on career outcomes such as pay and promotion. The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) conducts the Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR), a biennial, longitudinal survey of doctorate recipients in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines (STEM) which allows policymakers and researchers to track the career outcomes of STEM doctorates. NCSES linked the SDR with publications data from two sources, as well as data on patents and NSF grants providing a rich dataset with which to understand how the scholarly output of scientists and engineers correlates with career trajectories.This project will first examine the quality of the data linkages by comparing the algorithm-matched publication data to Gold Standard, hand-curated data. The second phase of this project will evaluate the effect of measurement error in publications data on the longitudinal SDR data. Results from this work will inform the research community about the error in the linked data and potential solutions for addressing it. Finally, time varying and non-time varying variables will be used to model promotion to tenure, providing insight into whether the academic folk wisdom of “publish or perish” has meaningful impact on scientists’ career trajectories.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.