Invention Disclosures and the Slowdown of Scientific Knowledge

No 20-6, UNCG Economics Working Papers from University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics

Abstract: Invention disclosures are one measure of new scientific knowledge that represents and predicts the future scientific research output of a U.S. federal laboratory. In this paper, we document a negative shift in the production function for new scientific knowledge as measured by invention disclosures at one federal laboratory, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, over the first 16 years of the new millennium. We find a negative shift of the production function for new scientific knowledge, and that shift might reflect the coincidence of the ICT revolution that enabled fast science, and the evaluation of research with uncritical use of citation counts that created incentives to focus on incremental research in crowded research topics.

Keywords: Invention disclosures; Federal laboratory; Scientific knowledge; Knowledge production function; ICT revolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 O35 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2020-07-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ict, nep-ino, nep-knm and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:uncgec:2020_006

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