Science as an Asset Class
Assume for the moment that scientific articles paid substantial royalties to their owners, approximately commensurate with the value to society of their ideas. That would make highly influential articles extremely valuable. Foundational papers in a field, such as the science behind CRISPR, could conceivably be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Moderately successful papers in small subfields would be worth somewhat more than the cost to produce them, while a great many papers with obscure, stale ideas and one or two citations per year would be nearly worthless.
Funding impactful science would quickly become a big business, as the most successful and efficient research institutions earned massive profits. What might emerge?
Universities, which would probably demand a cut of any revenue from research produced at their labs, would likely remain major players, much as music studios supported the music industry in the era when the technology to produce and distribute music was expensive and hard to access. The more successful research universities would gain a large new revenue stream independent of their endowments or state budgets.
Private investment funds that believe they have a competitive edge in identifying promising research would enter the funding space, buying up articles they expect to appreciate and funding scientists they expect to succeed. Investment strategies are likely to vary dramatically, as they do in other markets. Some funds would pay high multiples to buy shares in already successful 'blue chip' articles to collect a modest dividend. Other 'growth' funds would try to identify the latest trends in a field and invest in as many papers as they can find in that area, expecting them to appreciate as the trend grows more influential. Other 'fundamental' investors might pick out undervalued papers with unorthodox views they expect will eventually be vindicated.
The post-publication market would be matched by an equally robust capital market for investment in science production. Promising young scientists could pitch their research programs to venture capital firms who expect to lose money on most of their investments, in the hope that a fraction will revolutionize their field and pay back the investment a hundredfold. Some firms would act as incubators, providing free access to cutting-edge labs in exchange for a larger share of the royalties. Others may find it more efficient to guarantee funding for individual scientists and then let them be creative with how they use the resources. The most successful scientists would negotiate favorable contracts with their universities and investors to keep a larger share of royalties for themselves, much as star musicians renegotiate ever more favorable contracts with their studios.
Presumably very few successful science-producing enterprises would employ the current model of requiring every scientist to endure an extremely tedious application process that takes up half their time before receiving funding.
As an illustration, suppose a citation in a well-funded journal is worth $5,000 to the article cited (Part IV shows where the figure comes from). That $5,000 is distributed among the owners. Say the main author owns 20 percent and two co-authors own 10 percent each, the university owns 30 percent, the lab owns 10 percent, and the remaining 20 percent is owned by a venture capital fund that invested $100,000 for its share. The author earns $1,000, the coauthors and the lab $500 each, the university $1,500, and the investor $1,000. If the paper is cited in this or a similarly well-paying journal 100 times, the investment breaks even. As with other venture-like investments, most articles will lose money, but a handful of seminal papers pay for everything else.
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