How do career strategies, gender, and work environment affect faculty productivity levels in university-based science centers?

Recent studies have shown that in many science and engineering fields, almost 40% of faculty are affiliated with university-based research centers (Corley & Gaughan, 2005). As major science funding organizations continue to increase annual levels of funding for interdisciplinary science centers, it is likely that this number will increase significantly over the next decade. Moreover, some scholars have argued that the rise of university-based science centers has already led to the development of a new institutional form for the execution of university-based research (Bozeman & Boardman, 2004). Yet, interestingly few researchers have studied the impacts of this new institutional form on the productivity of individual researchers. The purpose of this article is to begin to address how individual career strategies and perceptions of scientific work environments within university-based science centers relate to the productivity of academic scientists who participate in these centers. In particular, this article investigates the relationships between productivity, individual career strategies, and perceptions of scientific work environment across gender. The results of the study demonstrate that university-based science centers might serve as an equalizing mechanism for male and female productivity levels. Yet, women scientists affiliated with these centers are significantly more likely to feel discriminated against - and they are less likely to embrace the most promising career strategy for the current structure of these centers.