nep-sog New Economics Papers
on Sociology of Economics
Issue of 2010‒08‒21
four papers chosen by
Jonas Holmström
Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration

  1. The Pricing of Academic Journals: A Two-Sided Market Perspective. By Jeon, Doh-Shin; Rochet, Jean-Charles
  2. References made and citations received by scientific articles. By Albarrán, Pedro; Ruiz-Castillo, Javier
  3. Boundary spanning in a for-profit research lab: An exploration of the interface between commerce and academe By Christopher C. Liu; Toby E. Stuart
  4. University departments evaluation: a multivariate approach By Monacciani, Fabiana

  1. By: Jeon, Doh-Shin; Rochet, Jean-Charles
    JEL: D42 L42 L82
    Date: 2010–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ner:toulou:http://neeo.univ-tlse1.fr/2685/&r=sog
  2. By: Albarrán, Pedro; Ruiz-Castillo, Javier
    Abstract: This paper studies massive evidence about references made and citations received after a five-year citation window by 3.7 million articles published in 1998-2002 in 22 scientific fields. We find that the distributions of references made and citations received share a number of basic features across sciences. Reference distributions are rather skewed to the right, while citation distributions are even more highly skewed: the mean is about 20 percentage points to the right of the median, and articles with a remarkable or outstanding number of citations represent about 9% of the total. Moreover, the existence of a power law representing the upper tail of citation distributions cannot be rejected in 17 fields whose articles represent 74.5% of the total. Contrary to the evidence in other contexts, the value of the scale parameter is between three and four in 15 of the 17 cases. Finally, power laws are typically small but capture a considerable proportion of the total citations received
    Date: 2009–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ner:carlos:info:hdl:10016/6374&r=sog
  3. By: Christopher C. Liu (Rotman School of Management, Toronto, Canada); Toby E. Stuart (Harvard Business School, Entrepreneurial Management Unit)
    Abstract: In innovative industries, private-sector companies increasingly are participants in open communities of science and technology. To participate in the system of exchange in such communities, firms often publicly disclose what would otherwise remain private discoveries. In a quantitative case study of one firm in the biopharmaceutical sector, we explore the consequences of scientific publication-an instance of public disclosure-for a core set of activities within the firm. Specifically, we link publications to human capital management practices, showing that scientists' bonuses and the allocation of managerial attention are tied to individuals' publications. Using a unique electronic mail dataset, we find that researchers within the firm who author publications are much better connected to external (to the company) members of the scientific community. This result directly links publishing to current understandings of absorptive capacity. In an unanticipated finding, however, our analysis raises the possibility that the company's most prolific publishers begin to migrate to the periphery of the intra-firm social network, which may occur because these individuals' strong external relationships induce them to reorient their focus to a community of scientists beyond the firm's boundary.
    Date: 2010–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hbs:wpaper:11-012&r=sog
  4. By: Monacciani, Fabiana
    Abstract: Aim of the paper is to present a new model, based on multivariate statistic analyses, allowing to express a synthetic judgement on Departments activities by taking into consideration the whole set of indicators describing them both as aggregations of researchers and as University autonomous organs. The model, based on Principal Component Analysis and Cluster Analysis, allows both to explain the determinants of Departments performances, and to classify them into homogeneous groups. The paper shows the results obtained by testing the proposed model on University of Naples “L’Orientale” Departments, using data extracted by the 2007 assessment report to the Ministry of University and Research.
    Keywords: Evaluation; Departments; Multivariate statistics
    JEL: D0 I23 C19
    Date: 2010–04–15
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:24224&r=sog

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