BENGALURU: Industry’s growing role in scientific publishing is helping researchers generate novel ideas across a range of disciplines, but it may also be steering science away from “blue skies research”, curiosity-driven investigations pursued without immediate commercial objectives, which have historically produced some of science’s most unexpected discoveries.
Published in PLOS One, the study by researchers from the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) and collaborators analysed 11.1 million scientific papers across 1,639 science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields between 2000 and 2014. It is among the largest examinations of how industry involvement shapes scientific discovery.
The researchers, Anubha Shokhand and Nilam Kaushik from IIMB and Satyam Mukherjee from the School of Management and Entrepreneurship, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, studied what they termed “industry publishing contribution” — the share of papers in a field that include at least one industry-affiliated author.
While universities continue to produce most scientific publications, industry participation is substantial in fields such as AI, biotechnology and applied engineering. The study found that disciplines with stronger industry participation were more likely to produce research containing novel combinations of ideas.
A one standard deviation increase in industry publishing contribution was associated with nearly 47% higher odds of a paper being classified as novel. According to the researchers, companies often bring practical problems, fresh perspectives and interdisciplinary challenges into scientific fields. These inputs can expand the pool of ideas available to scientists and encourage new combinations of knowledge that might not otherwise emerge.
However, the picture became more nuanced when the researchers examined the nature of novelty itself. They measured two different aspects of novelty. “Novelty breadth” refers to how widely a study integrates ideas from different domains, while “novelty distance” captures how intellectually far apart those ideas are.
A study connecting several related disciplines may score highly on breadth. In contrast, research combining concepts from vastly different fields would score highly on distance - the kind of intellectual leap often associated with radical breakthroughs.
As industry participation increased, novelty breadth rose by about 4.4%, suggesting broader integration of knowledge. At the same time, novelty distance declined by around 2.6%, indicating a reduction in research that bridges the most conceptually distant fields.
The findings point to a trade-off. Fields with stronger industry involvement appear better at generating useful new combinations of ideas that address real-world problems, but may place less emphasis on blue skies research.
Surprisingly, universities emerged as the main drivers of these patterns. The increase in novelty associated with industry-heavy fields was strongest among university researchers rather than scientists working solely within industry.
“What struck us was that the relationship between industry publishing and novelty extended well beyond publications that industry itself produced,” Prof Nilam Kaushik of IIMB told TOI.
“...We found that university researchers emerged as primary beneficiaries of industry’s presence in terms of being more likely to produce research with novel knowledge combinations and integrate ideas from a broader range of domains. At the same time, university researchers experienced a measurable decline in curiosity-driven research connecting intellectually distant ideas. Together, our findings suggest that industry’s publishing contribution has wider field level effects,” she added.
The study also found that elite research institutions were better able to sustain high-risk research spanning intellectually distant fields, even in areas with substantial industry involvement. The authors suggest that stronger infrastructure, stable funding and greater freedom to pursue long-term questions may help these institutions balance commercial relevance with scientific exploration.
For policymakers increasingly promoting university-industry collaboration, the message is not that industry participation is harmful. Rather, the researchers argue that govts should encourage such partnerships while creating mechanisms to protect long-term, curiosity-driven research, particularly in fields where commercial interests are becoming increasingly influential.
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