Contracting Over the Disclosure of Scientific Knowledge: Intellectual Property and Academic Publication

By Joshua S. Gans, Fiona E. Murray, Scott Stern. 2017

110 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper provides a theoretical investigation of the tension over knowledge disclosure between firms and their scientific employees. While empirical research suggests that scientists exhibit a “taste for science,” such open disclosures can limit a firm's competitive advantage or ability to profitably commercialize their innovations. To explore how this tension is resolved we focus on the strategic interaction between researchers and firms bargaining over whether (and how) knowledge will be disclosed. We evaluate four disclosure strategies: secrecy, patenting, open science (scientific publication) and patent-paper pairs providing insights into the determinants of the disclosure strategy of a firm. We find that patents and publications can be complementary instruments facilitating the disclosure of knowledge-providing predictions as to when stronger IP protection regimes might drive openness by firms.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Information Systems and Management, Management of Technology and Innovation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d381ab2565abd9dde8ae819090adf4faefdb4613

Citations in the corpus

• Not All Scientists pay to be Scientists (2014, unknown): “who are willing to give up pay in exchange for opportunities to engage in open science (Stern, 2004; Gans et al., 2010).”