The market economy, and the scientific commons

By Richard R. Nelson. 2004

693 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract In principle there is a clear divide between science and technology. In practice there isn’t. In principle, while practical inventions can be patented, scientific findings can’t be. In practice, increasingly scientific findings are being patented. The argument of this paper is that this is bad for the advance of science and for the advance of technology. However, because of the blurry lines, it will not be easy to deal with. The paper lays out a strategy that at least has some promise.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Management of Technology and Innovation, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b27f2cf9f504def3766a3a502f2e6348243686f8

How researchers see this paper

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In Economics and Econometrics

In Management of Technology and Innovation

In Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

Citations in the corpus

Engaging the scholar: Three types of academic consulting and their impact on universities and industry (2008, neutral): “While research outputs are utilized as inputs to both research and technology development (Nelson, 2004), problems arising in technology development provide agendas for follow-on research activities (Rosenberg, 1992).”
Research Output From University–Industry Collaborative Projects (2013, background): “On one hand, industry involvement might delay or suppress academic publication, endangering the intellectual commons and the practices of open science (Dasgupta & David, 1994; Nelson, 2004).”
If star scientists do not patent: The effect of productivity, basicness and impact on the decision to patent in the academic world (2007, background): “On the one side it has been advocated that loosening the dependence from the rewards set by the Scientific Community would result in an inexorable dismissal of the inherent goals and procedural rules of science (David, 2002; Nelson, 2004 ), which as a matter of fact may result in shifting the focus”
What enables rapid economic progress: What are the needed institutions (2008, background): “Recently concerns have been expressed that these kinds of patents, which control paths of future research, can seriously interfere with the progress of science (for a discussion see Nelson, 2004 ).”
Contracting Over the Disclosure of Scientific Knowledge: Intellectual Property and Academic Publication (2017, neutral): “The end result is the identification of a potentially 2 See, for example, Heller and Einsenberg (1998), Bok (2003), Nelson (2004) and Heller (2008). important inter-temporal complementarity between publication decisions (namely, one cannot generate a citation unless the future researchers also…”
Technical Change and Industrial Dynamics as Evolutionary Processes (2009, background): “…technology has been increasing, and in turn such a science base has been largely the product of publicly funded research, while the knowledge produced by that research has been largely open and available for potential innovation to use (more in Nelson 2004; David 2001 and 2004; and Pavitt, 2001).”
Publication and patent behavior of academic researchers: Conflicting, reinforcing or merely co-existing? (2006, neutral): “As outlined by Nelson (2004), this transformation raises important questions concerning the openness of the scientific ‘enterprise’.”
Forms of knowledge and modes of innovation (2007, methodology): “…it is still the case that, “much of practice in most fields remains only partially understood, and much of engineering design practice involves solutions to problems that professional engineers have learned ‘work’ without any particularly sophisticated understanding of why” (Nelson, 2004, p. 458).”
Evolutionary social science and universal Darwinism (2006, background): “Here many of the key writers have their backgrounds in Philosophy, or the field of Evolutionary Epistemology as developed by Popper and Campbell [see in particular Popper (1959), Campbell (1974), Hull (1988, 2001), Kitcher (1993), Nelson (2004), Plotkin (1982)].”
Crossing the Rubicon: exploring the factors that shape academics' perceptions of the barriers to working with industry (2012, background): “The institutional norms under which university scientists operate are characterised by open dissemination and autonomy, within a reward system based on peer recognition gained through publication priority and originality of research (Merton, 1957; Nelson, 2004).”