Date created: | Last Updated:

Category: Project

Description: A robust science system is crucial for national prosperity. Robert K. Merton, the pioneer of modern sociology of science, outlined the ethos of science with four key norms: disinterestedness, communalism, universalism, and organized skepticism. The continuous generation of scientific knowledge is believed to rely on the effective functioning of these norms. However, the remarkable increase in publications from China over the past two decades raises questions about the assumed dependence of effective science production on this idealized scientific culture, which is supposed to protect science from external influences. The Chinese science system is notably influenced by political interests, which threaten its academic freedom (AF). To determine whether China is an exception and to explore the relationship between adherence to the science ethos and national knowledge production, this study examines the correlation between an index measuring national AF and bibliometric indicators, such as publication counts. We applied three different identification strategies, namely two-way fixed effects regressions, within-between random effects regression, and difference-in-differences estimators, and used different bibliometric indicators to calculate the effect of AF on national performance. We found a positive and statistically significant effect of the ‘between AF’ variance on bibliometric indicators with a pooled effect size of 1.7969 (95%-CI = 1.4647; 2.1290]). ‘within AF’ has a positive pooled effect size of 0.0266 (95%-CI = [-0.0077; 0.0609]), but is statistically not significant at conventional levels. These results can be summarized as follows: Whereas differences between countries in enabling AF are related to differences in their national performance, changes in enabling AF within a country are not reflected in annual performance differences to that extent as the differences between the countries.