Anatomy of use-inspired researchers: From Pasteur’s Quadrant to Pasteur’s Cube model

Abstract

Pasteur’s Quadrant model, published by Stokes in 1997, presents a two-dimensional abstract conceptual framework that proved immensely helpful to study and discuss institutional and policy arrangements in science. However, during the last 10 years the PQ model was also applied in a series of large-scale, survey-based studies worldwide to classify individual modern-day researchers according to their research orientation and performance.This paper argues that such applications are inadequate to capture key characteristics of individual researchers, especially those within the heterogeneous ‘Pasteur type’ group who engage in ‘use-inspired’ basic scientific research. Addressing this shortcoming, Pasteur’s Cube (PC) model introduces a new heuristic tool. Departing from a three-dimensional conceptual framework of research-related activities, the model enables a range of typologies to describe and study the large variety of academics at today’s research-intensive universities. The PC model’s analytical robustness was tested empirically in two interrelated ‘proof of concept’ studies: an exploratory survey among 150 European universities and a follow-up case study of Leiden University in the Netherlands. Both studies, collecting data for the years 2010–2015, applied a metrics-based taxonomy to classify individual academic researchers according to four performance categories: scientific publication output, research collaboration with the business sector, patents filings, and being engaging in entrepreneurial activities.The collective results of both studies provide more clarity on relevant subgroups of use-inspired researchers. The PC model can be used to guide empirical, metrics-based investigations of research activities and productivities, applies this approach to two case studies, and demonstrates the utility of the method while also reinforcing and enriching the growing body of literature showing that cross-sectoral and cross-functional research activities are more scientifically productive than research carried out in isolation of the context of use. Introducing the ‘Crossover Collaborator’ subtype helps to explain why Pasteur type researchers tend to outperform other types of researchers in terms of publication output and citation impact.