Abstract
The chapter addresses forms of research which engage teams spread over one or more institutions. The practice to pool ‘brains’ has become evident since WWII; the subsequent fashion to build ‘science parks’ followed this tradition; and other forms of pooling became necessary when research depended on costly infrastructure.
The chapter reports on four types of research cooperation: bureaucratic, leaderless, non-specialized, and participatory. While the ‘participatory’ category appears to dominate in the field of particle physics, the remaining three categories cover cross-disciplinary endeavors. The more formally organized and tightly managed projects were found in the field sciences (e.g. space science, geophysics), while small, more informally organized and more loosely managed projects are more common in the laboratory sciences (e.g. materials science). No association could be established between size and perceived success of the collaboration.
In collaboration with Wesley Shrum and Joel Genuth.
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A great deal of attention has been devoted recently to the changing modes and organization of R&D, including the mode of interaction between academia, industry, and government, which has gained currency as the “Triple Helix” model (Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz 1996, 1998; Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000; Leydesdorff 2005). The model explicitly tries to explain knowledge-based innovation systems by examining network overlays of communication among the three sectors. These frameworks operate on a macro-level of analysis with an emphasis on technology transfer, innovation, and enhancing the economic applicability of scientific research. Just like Ben-David’s focus was narrower, primarily on academic science and centers of learning that could preserve the relative autonomy of science and mitigate the hazardous tendencies of politicization and commercialization of science, most of our projects represented—and focused on—academic experimental and basic research. One of the few exceptions is the first case study in this chapter (the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation—a NSF-funded Industry/University Cooperative Research Center), which was conducted somewhat later and fits well in the Triple Helix model as an example of a particular innovation based on the interplay among academia, industry, and government.
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Wesley Shrum and Joel Genuth.
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Ames Laboratory is a government-owned, contractor-operated research facility of the US Department of Energy that is run by Iowa State University (ISU).
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Defense Advanced Research Project Agency; DARPA is the research and development office for the US Department of Defense.
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We have focused on the quality of accomplishments and impact of CNDE rather than on the quantity of the Center’s output, which was in itself impressive, given the small size of the collaboration (just 25 collaborating professional researchers and one institution). Over a fifteen-year period, the collaboration published over 600 articles, registered 34 patents, and led to the establishment of several spin-off companies.
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Just like the previous case study, I emphasize here the caliber of the accomplishments of CBT researchers, rather than the raw number of various outputs. Again, for a small collaboration with only 29 participating researchers from four different institutions, the sheer volume of publications was impressive—165 peer-reviewed articles over a two-year period.
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Chompalov, I. (2014). Lessons Learned from the Study of Multi-organizational Collaborations in Science and Implications for the Role of the University in the 21st Century. In: Herbst, M. (eds) The Institution of Science and the Science of Institutions. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 302. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7407-0_9
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