The Unequal Benefits of Academic Patenting for Science and Engineering Research.

We analyzed the scientific productivity of a sample of academic scientists that contribute to the field of Materials Science in the post-patenting period, by means of several econometric techniques suitable to treat unobserved heterogeneity, excess zeros and incidental truncation. Although patents do not alter the track of publications in the overall sample, we show this effect to be generated by two opposite effects: Materials Engineers increase their publications after patenting, whereas Materials Chemists experience a decrease. Besides, Materials Engineers who were academic inventors have a higher impact factor than their non-inventors colleagues, although the positive effect tends to vanish both for very basic publications and for serial inventions. Finally, a clearly negative effect is registered when we consider only very basic publications made by Materials Chemists. We interpret our findings as depending on different epistemologies of scientific and engineering research and discuss the implications for both university managers and policy makers.