In and out of Pasteur’s quadrant: revisiting trends in corporate science
基于1980至2014年大量论文和专利数据，研究发现美国企业科学论文比学术论文更偏向应用性、更少基础性，且大企业正从巴斯德象限转向爱迪生象限。
Based on a very large sample of publications and patents, we examine trends in US corporate science from 1980 to 2014 and revisit the hypothesis of its decline, as formulated in the recent literature. Drawing from Stokes’ (1997) ‘quadrants’ taxonomy, we produce two distinct indicators for corporate publications’ appliedness (consideration of use) and basicness (quest for fundamental understanding), under no assumption of a trade-off between the two. We find that corporate publications have progressively become more applied and less basic than academic ones, after controlling for fields and journals and assuming any measurement error to be time invariant. These results are mostly driven by established large firms in specific sectors, which appear to be moving away from Pasteur’s quadrant in the direction of Edison’s quadrant. Publications resulting from university-industry collaborations follow a similar trend, but in a much less pronounced way.