The National Institutes of Health (NIH) plays a critical role in funding scientific endeavors in biomedicine that would be difficult to finance via private sources. One important mandate of the NIH is to fund innovative science that tries out new ideas, but many have questioned the NIH's ability...

The ranking of scientific journals is important because of the signal it sends to scientists about what is considered most vital for scientific progress. Existing ranking systems focus on measuring the influence of a scientific paper (citations)--these rankings do not reward journals for...

A key decision in research is whether to try out new ideas or build on more established ideas. In this paper, we evaluate which type of work is more likely to spur further invention. When recent advances create superior opportunities for invention, their adoption as research inputs in the...

Faster technological progress has long been considered a key potential benefit of agglomeration. Physical proximity to others may help inventors adopt new ideas in their work by increasing awareness about which new ideas exist and by enhancing understanding of the properties and usefulness of...

Older scientists are often seen as less open to new ideas than younger scientists. We put this assertion to an empirical test. Using a measure of new ideas derived from the text of nearly all biomedical scientific articles published since 1946, we compare the tendency of younger and older...

Abstract Scientific research and private-sector technological innovation differ in objectives, constraints, and organizational forms. Scientific research may thus not be driven by the direct practical benefit to others in the way that private-sector innovation is. Alternatively, some - yet...

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) plays a critical role in funding scientific endeavors in biomedicine that would be difficult to finance via private sources. One important mandate of the NIH is to fund innovative science that tries out new ideas, but many have questioned the NIH's ability...

Intelligently allocating research effort and funds requires deciding whether to build on recent advances or on more established knowledge. When recent advances create superior opportunities for invention, their adoption as research inputs in the invention process promotes technological progress....

Scientific research and private-sector technological innovation are different in terms of objectives, constraints, and organizational forms. For example, the for-profit objective that drives private-sector innovation is absent from much of scientific research, and individual researchers have...