Prof. Sotaro Shibayama, The University of Tokyo, Institute for Future Initiatives
Chair: Prof. Raffaele Miniaci, Università di Brescia
When: Thursday, March 26th, 2026, 13.30 PM
Where: Room B2, Contrada Santa Chiara 50, Brescia
“Cooperation” is a foundational norm in academic science, often characterized by communal sharing of resources (e.g., research materials, data, and other intermediate resources) – practices that help facilitate scientific progress as well as the verification and reproducibility of results. Our previous work (Shibayama et al. 2012, 2021), based on survey data from the UK, Germany, and Japan identified several notable patterns in this practice. Unconditional, gratis, sharing was widely observed, including among scientists without prior personal or institutionalities. At the same time, various forms of reciprocity (e.g., co-authorship, acknowledgment as rewards) were commonly observed. We also suggested that this norm of sharing might be under pressure amid evolving institutional contexts of science. For example, scientists engaged in commercial activities were less likely to share at all and more likely to negotiate direct rewards for shared resources. A decade later, we conducted a follow-up survey in the same three countries to examine whether and how these practices and norms have changed over time. The new data reveal temporal shifts in patterns of academic cooperation and the underlying norms.