Science at risk? Considering the importance of academic freedom for STEM research production across 17 OECD countries.

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  • Additional Information
    • Source:
      Publisher: Public Library of Science Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 101285081 Publication Model: eCollection Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1932-6203 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 19326203 NLM ISO Abbreviation: PLoS One Subsets: MEDLINE
    • Publication Information:
      Original Publication: San Francisco, CA : Public Library of Science
    • Subject Terms:
      Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development* ; Freedom*; Bibliometrics
    • Abstract:
      Since 2011, a declining trend in academic freedom globally has paralleled a rising tide of neo-nationalism. We use fixed effects models to examine data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-DEM) academic freedom index and bibliometric data for 17 OECD countries across nearly three decades (1981-2007) that precede the recent decline in academic freedom. We find substantial, statistically significant, positive relationships between cross-nationally comparable and longitudinal measures of academic freedom and volume of STEM publications. Additionally, academic freedom positively influenced the quality of STEM publications as measured by journal rankings. Our findings were relatively consistent across various measures of academic freedom and model specifications. We discuss implications for safeguarding academic freedom, applying neo-institutional theory, and identifying directions for future research.
      Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
      (Copyright: © 2024 Fernandez et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)
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    • Publication Date:
      Date Created: 20240215 Date Completed: 20240219 Latest Revision: 20240219
    • Publication Date:
      20240219
    • Accession Number:
      PMC10868865
    • Accession Number:
      10.1371/journal.pone.0298370
    • Accession Number:
      38359041