Preliminary draft

This paper investigates how scientists decide whether to share information with their colleagues or not. Detailed data on the decisions of 1,694 bio-scientists allow us to detect similarities and differences between academia-based and industry-based scientists. In both realms, we find that the likelihood of sharing decreases with the economic value of particular information. Social factors, i.e., expected reciprocity and the extent to which a scientist’s community conforms to the norm of communalism, either directly affect information-sharing or moderate considerations of economic interest on information sharing. The effect depends on the system to which a scientist belongs