Scholarly publishing at US federally funded research & development laboratories: influences on public-private science

Government investment in basic research is generally divided into two categories: funding to external organisations—such as universities—and funding to internal organizations. While an extensive body of literature has been devoted to universities’ contribution of basic science, much less is known about that of governmental research centers. This paper analyzes the contribution of federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) to US science, with a focus on the contribution of the research & development laboratories (RDLs) to scholarly papers, scientific impact, disciplinary specialization and collaboration patters. Results show that these RDLs account for an increasing part of US papers—representing more than 25% of US papers in some specialties of physics—and that their relative impact is higher than that of average US papers. They are also found to vary substantially in their collaboration patterns, with percentages of international collaboration on publications from these organizations oscillating between 18% and 85%.

Ce contenu a été mis à jour le 17 novembre 2021 à 11 h 15 min.