TY  - JOUR
AU  - Conti, Annamaria
AU  - Liu, Christopher C
TI  - The (Changing) Knowledge Production Function: Evidence from the MIT Department of Biology for 1970-2000
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 20037
PY  - 2014
Y2  - April 2014
DO  - 10.3386/w20037
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w20037
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w20037.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Annamaria Conti
University of Lausanne - Faculty of Business and E
Internef Building office 607
CH-1015 Lausanne 
Switzerland
E-Mail: Annamaria.conti@unil.ch

Christopher Liu
Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto
105 St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
Tel: 416.978.5268 
Fax: 416.978.4629 
E-Mail: chris.liu@rotman.utoronto.ca
M1  - published as Annamaria Conti, Christopher C. Liu. "The (Changing) Knowledge Production Function: Evidence from the MIT Department of Biology for 1970–2000," in Adam B. Jaffe and Benjamin F. Jones, editors, "The Changing Frontier: Rethinking Science and Innovation Policy" University of Chicago Press (2015)

M3  - presented at "The Changing Frontier:", August 2-3, 2013
AB  - Considerable attention has been focused, in recent years, on the role that graduate and postdoc students play in the production of academic knowledge. Using data from the MIT Department of Biology for the period 1970-2000, we analyze the evolution over time of four fundamental aspects of their productivity:  i) training duration; ii) time to a first publication; iii) productivity over the training period; and iv) collaboration with other scientists. We identified four main trends that are common to graduate students and postdocs. First, training periods have increased for later cohorts of graduate and postdoc students. Second, later cohorts tend to publish their initial first-author article later than the earlier cohorts. Third, they produce fewer first-author publications.  Finally, collaborations with other scientists, as measured by the number of coauthors on a paper, have increased. This increase is driven by collaborations with scientists external to a trainee's laboratory. We interpret these results in light of the following two paradigms: the increased burden of knowledge that later generations of scientists face and the limited availability of permanent academic positions.
ER  -