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Science as a Public Good: Public Use and Funding of Science

Author

Listed:
  • Yian Yin
  • Yuxiao Dong
  • Kuansan Wang
  • Dashun Wang
  • Benjamin Jones

Abstract

Knowledge of how science is consumed in public domains is essential for a deeper understanding of the role of science in human society. While science is heavily supported by public funding, common depictions suggest that scientific research remains an isolated or ‘ivory tower’ activity, with weak connectivity to public use, little relationship between the quality of research and its public use, and little correspondence between the funding of science and its public use. This paper introduces a measurement framework to examine public good features of science, allowing us to study public uses of science, the public funding of science, and how use and funding relate. Specifically, we integrate five large-scale datasets that link scientific publications from all scientific fields to their upstream funding support and downstream public uses across three public domains – government documents, the news media, and marketplace invention. We find that the public uses of science are extremely diverse, with different public domains drawing distinctively across scientific fields. Yet amidst these differences, we find key forms of alignment in the interface between science and society. First, despite concerns that the public does not engage high-quality science, we find universal alignment, in each scientific field and public domain, between what the public consumes and what is highly impactful within science. Second, despite myriad factors underpinning the public funding of science, the resulting allocation across fields presents a striking alignment with the field’s collective public use. Overall, public uses of science present a rich landscape of specialized consumption, yet collectively science and society interface with remarkable, quantifiable alignment between scientific use, public use, and funding.

Suggested Citation

  • Yian Yin & Yuxiao Dong & Kuansan Wang & Dashun Wang & Benjamin Jones, 2021. "Science as a Public Good: Public Use and Funding of Science," NBER Working Papers 28748, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28748
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    Cited by:

    1. Confraria, Hugo & Ciarli, Tommaso & Noyons, Ed, 2024. "Countries' research priorities in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(3).
    2. Shin, Seungryul Ryan & Lee, Jisoo & Jung, Yura Rosemary & Hwang, Junseok, 2022. "The diffusion of scientific discoveries in government laboratories: The role of patents filed by government scientists," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(5).
    3. Malte Hückstädt, 2023. "Ten reasons why research collaborations succeed—a random forest approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(3), pages 1923-1950, March.
    4. Wu, Lingfei & Kittur, Aniket & Youn, Hyejin & Milojević, Staša & Leahey, Erin & Fiore, Stephen M. & Ahn, Yong-Yeol, 2022. "Metrics and mechanisms: Measuring the unmeasurable in the science of science," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    5. Giorgio Tripodi & Francesco Lamperti & Roberto Mavilia & Andrea Mina & Francesca Chiaromonte & Fabrizio Lillo, 2022. "Quantifying knowledge spillovers from advances in negative emissions technologies," LEM Papers Series 2022/17, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights

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