The use of rewards in the sharing of research resources

The literature has shown that academics often share intermediate research resources bilaterally and only infrequently deny requests for sharing. This study goes further and investigates how resource sharing is rewarded. We contrast rewarded and non-rewarded sharing, and further differentiate the types of rewards into direct (e.g., coauthorship) and reputational (e.g., acknowledgments). In a survey of 1,204 resource suppliers or recipients in the UK, Germany, and Japan, we find that rewards are commonly used, and that the form of rewarding is associated with the context in which academics work. In particular, we find that suppliers who are commercially active are more likely to agree on direct rewards. Instead, suppliers who make use of open sharing platforms are more likely to agree on reputational rewards and less likely to agree on direct rewards. For both suppliers and recipients we find that those working in larger teams are more likely to agree on direct rewards, and that their interdisciplinarity is positively linked to direct rewards and negatively to reputational rewards. These results suggest that a reward system for intermediate resources is emerging and rewarding practices are evolving with contextual differences.