PONE-D-21-19145

The enduring pursuit of public science at U.S. land-grant universities

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Foltz,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Both reviewers are quite enthusiastic about the contribution your submission makes, and I share their assessment.  I believe, however, your analysis could be improved and its impact increased by addressing some or all of the points suggested by Reviewer #2.  In particular, I encourage you to consider the issue of stratification and differences in trends across the spectrum of land-grant institutions represented and to explore some of the correlations between measures in the data.  I will not need to send a revised version back to the reviewers, but I do ask that you consider the feasibility and desirability of the suggested additional analysis and either incorporate them in the revised manuscript or explain why you have chosen not to do so.

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Kind regards,

Joshua L Rosenbloom

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Overall, interesting results and comparison of faculty attitudes over time are noteworthy relative to the changing incentives.

The "methods" section describes the changing gender composition of faculty over time. It was a bit unclear whether the reported data in the main text adjust for these changes or not.

I didn't think figure 1 was necessary. Figure 4 was a bit confusing in terms of what the circles locations and sizes represented.

Reviewer #2: The authors present a fascinating analyses of the changes in the public science model. The article exploits four

waves of survey evidence from agricultural and life science faculty at the 52 major U.S. land-grant universities, spanning 1989-2015, to examine faculty attitudes/preferences, tenure and promotion criteria, output, and funding sources. The results show that attitudes toward scientific research have remained remarkably stable over twenty-five years in strongly favoring intrinsic and public science goals over commercial or extrinsic goals. We also demonstrate the faculty's positive attitudes toward science, an increased pressure to publish in top journals and secure increasingly competitive grants, as well as declining time for science.

There is much to like in this interesting, novel and clearly executed study. The authors are answering important question with new data. The findings are appropriately interpreted and the drafting of the paper is clear.

I suggest a few possible routes for improvement.

(1) There is little analysis of the relationships between the variables. While the authors demonstrate that attitudes change little it would be nice to know more about whether the changes they document Figures 6 and 7 affect faculty attitudes controlling for other factors. It would of interest to know whether declining research time - documented in figure 10 - affect faculty attitudes.

(2) I would be nice to see some analyses that look at the trends differently by university ranking. Many feel that their is increasing stratification within higher education and I wonder if your data reveal that. It would be interesting to know if research funding, time are being increasingly concentrated at elite institutions and how that might affect trends in attitudes by school rank.

(3) The paper is largely written as if commercial and basic science are substitutes. However recent research indicates that basic and applied research are complements (Akcigit, Hanley, Serrano-Velarde, 2021). In agriculture high level basic research does have positive spillovers to the commercial sector (Kantor and Whalley, 2019) and how the local commercial sector spills over to basic research (Sohn, 2021). This should be discussed.

(4) The paper has little to say about what exact commercial activities they expect from faculty members in this space. Many think of silicon valley software spinoffs as a positive externality from Stanford Computer Science faculty research. What are the likely spinoff technologies here?

References:

Akcigit, Hanley, Serrano-Velarde, 2021

https://academic.oup.com/restud/article/88/1/1/5922649?login=true

Kantor and Whalley, 2019

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/701035?mobileUi=0

Sohn, 2021

https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/full/10.1287/orsc.2020.1407

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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The enduring pursuit of public science at U.S. land-grant universities

PONE-D-21-19145R1

Dear Dr. Foltz,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Thank you for your responsiveness in considering the suggestions of the reviewers for improvement.  The revised version is clearly above the bar for publication, but I confess that I still find Figure 4 and its explanation somewhat opaque.  I assume that the position on the x-axis denotes the ranking of average scores across individuals, so it is not clear to me (still) what the size of the circles reflects.  You describe larger circles as reflecting higher relative average scores, but this doesn't much clarify things.  Perhaps this data would be more clearly conveyed with two graphs?

I hope you will consider ways to more clearly communicate this information, but you may proceed regardless.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Joshua L Rosenbloom

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: