Inventorship and authorship as attribution rights: An enquiry into the economics of scientific credit

Francesco Lissoni, Fabio Montobbio and Lorenzo Zirulia

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2013, vol. 95, issue C, 49-69

Abstract: Authorship and inventorship are “attribution rights” upon which individual scientists build their reputation and career. Social and legal norms concerning their distribution within research teams are currently criticized for failing to inform third parties on individual contributions. We examine the case of teams engaged in the “double disclosure” of their research results through both publications and patents, and model the negotiation process taking place between junior or female team members and the senior (male) ones. We suggest that the former may give up inventorship in order to secure authorship, even when entitled to the both. Based on a sample of 680 “patent–publication pairs” (related sets of patents and publications) we show that, very frequently, one or more authors of a publication do not appear as inventors of a related patent. This is less likely to happen for first and last authors, which is in accordance both with our model and the prevailing legal norms on inventorship. However, the probability of exclusion from inventorship also declines with seniority, and increases for women, which is compatible with our model only.

Keywords: Economics of science; Intellectual property; Patent–publication pairs; Scientific credit; Authorship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L30 O31 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268113002163
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Inventorship and authorship as attribution rights: An enquiry into the economics of scientific credit (2013)
Working Paper: Inventorship and authorship as attribution rights: An enquiry into the economics of scientific credit (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:95:y:2013:i:c:p:49-69

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2013.08.016

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().