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WHVIOTY J;:
A.;:;iSULTUu£ LI^RY

Research Productivity
of the State Agricultural
Experiment Station System:

Measured by

Scientific Publication Output

G.W. Salisbury

CIRCULAn. jj_COPY_

AGRICULTURE LI3RARY

Bulletin 762

Agricultural Experiment Station

College of Agriculture

University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The investigations reported here on the scientific publication output
of agricultural experiment stations in the United States were initiated
as early as 1948 when the author as head of the Department of Dairy
Science began keeping score on the progress of that one department.
The effort was expanded to include the research productivity of all the
domestic animal sciences in academe when the author was a member
of the Agricultural Panel of President J. F. Kennedy's Science Advisory
Committee, 1961-1963. It was expanded further to include all major
subjects of agricultural research under Hatch Project 1-320, Research
Productivity — A Study in Research Management, 1971-1977, when the
author served as director of the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Sta-
tion, 1969-1978. The detailed analysis of the Illinois Agricultural Experi-
ment Station records was completed after retirement.

Many people aided the author in the course of the acquisition of
these data and their statistical analyses. It is believed that in most
instances appreciation for that aid was expressed at the time it was
provided. Those deserving special mention include R. J. Miller, director
of the Idaho Agricultural Experiment Station who as associate director
of the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station helped extend the study
beyond the limits of animal agriculture; F. M. Wilkens, who organized
the details of recording the page-by-page analysis of the 31,911 papers
constituting the major original contribution of this report; C. R. Ander-
son and S. L. Warren, who supervised the statistical analysis of the
data, the first as the explorer of its parameters and the second who
placed the capstone; and J. H. Olson, who in 1977-78 made the first
attempt to gather the findings of the several studies together as a coor-
dinated whole.

G. W. Salisbury

no.

Cop.

ABSTRACT

Three studies are reported of the scientific publication output of U.S.
agricultural experiment station scientists for the period 1945 through
1978. The first study dealt with the 1945-1975 fiscal-year sequence of
reports by the stations to the U.S. Department of Agriculture of their
annual publication of technical journal articles.

The second analysis was of three different three-year series of pub-
lications by agricultural scientists in selected peer-edited agricultural
science journals. The first subset for the calendar years 1958-1960 dealt
solely with the number of publications in the subject matter of domestic
animal research. The second for calendar years 1965-1967 dealt with
the number of domestic animal research publications and also included
a survey of the opinions of 85 scientists in the field of the relative rank-
ing of the stations of the 50 states. The agreement between the station
rank order by actual count of publications and the collective opinions
of scientists of the relative rank of the stations was high. The third
subset in this study was of full-length scientific papers appearing in 66
selected peer-edited scientific journals published during the calendar
years 1967-1969 for ten different agricultural subject matters.

The third study dealt in detail with the 30-year publication record
(1948-1978) of the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station by depart-
ments and research units. Throughout all of these investigations some
corollary evidence on total research funding and staff size of the de-
partments, research units, or stations was available for study in relation
to publication output.

Statistical studies indicated that there exist real differences in the
publication output among the states, with relative funding and staff
size the important covariables. The rank order of the top ten stations
changed when staff size and dollar funding were held statistically con-
stant.

The Illinois station ranked at about the center within the first ten
state stations however the calculations were made. Within the Illinois
station, the differences in publication output for the several units were
largely determined by the input of constant-value dollars and the num-
ber of scientists.

The publication tradition and behavioral patterns of the several Illi-
nois subject matter fields differed. The proportion of their total publica-
tions published in peer-edited journals varied widely among units but
changed little with time, and the Illinois behavior seemed not to differ
from that of counterparts elsewhere.

The rank order of the Illinois units in publication output varied with
the measure of output used, total station-reported publications or peer-
edited ones, but the magnitudes of the inputs into the units, numbers
of senior scientists and number of dollars (actual or of calculated con-
stant value) invested, were greater influences on the numbers of publi-
cations resulting and the rank order.

The Illinois station has performed its research function as measured
by the standards of this research well above the mean of its U.S. coun-
terparts. The question occurs as to why this should be the case. Aside

from the observation that the senior staff is of more than average com-
petence and, as individuals, are loyal and like what they do, there are
no data to test the point. There is evidence that their peak efficiency
has been reached and that the reduced public investment in constant-
value dollars apparent in the past few bienniums has already resulted
in a decrease in the output of the products of research the Illinois
Agricultural Experiment Station was created to provide.

CONTENTS

The Agricultural Research System in the United States 8

Organization of Research at the Illinois Station 11

Scientific Publications as a Measure of Research Productivity 13

Source of National Data on Publications Output 14

Study I: A Review of Station Publication Numbers Reported

by OES and CSRS 14

Study II: Peer-Edited Journal Articles 19

Study Ha: Journal Articles — Animal Agriculture, 1958-1960 ... .20

Study lib: Journal Articles and Opinion Survey — Animal

Agriculture, 1965-1967 20

Study Ik: Full-Length Journal Articles — Ten Agricultural

Subject Matters, 1967-1969 24

Illinois Rank by Subject Matter Areas — Peer-Edited Journals ... .25

Study III: The Thirty-Year Research Productivity of the Illinois

Station, Fiscal Years 1949-1978 30

Variations in the Nature of Agricultural Research 31

Number of Staff 33

Financial Support 33

Number of Publications 35

Publications per Scientist 35

Publications in Relation to Operating Investment in Research .... 38

Corollary Changes Within Science as an Enterprise 40

Statistical Treatments of the Data 42

Time Trends in the Efficiency of the Illinois Station's

Publication Output 45

Outlook for the Future Publication Productivity

of Agricultural Scientists 47

Dependence of Publication Output on Dollar Investments 48

Variations in Level of Investment in Agricultural Research 49

Federal: Hatch and Mclntire-Stennis 49

State 50

Intrainstitutional Allocation of Funds . 50

Public Examination Necessary 51

Agricultural Research Necessary to National Welfare 52

Lessons From the Illinois Study 52

Publication Records as Indicative of Benefits From Research 54

Public Examination — Invasion of Privacy? 56

The Problem for the Public 57

References Cited 58

Appendix: Raw Data for Study He 60

Publications in 66 Peer-Edited Journals, by Subject Matter

for All Stations, 1967-1969 61

Peer-Edited Journals Used in Study lie 62

Urbano, Illinois July, 1980

Publications in the Bulletin series report the results of investigations made or sponsored by

the Experiment Station. The Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station provides equal oppor-
tunities in programs and employment.

Research Productivity of the State
Agricultural Experiment Station System:
Measured by Scientific Publication Output

G. W. Salisbury, Director Emeritus
Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station

This appraisal of research productivity is intended as an accountability
report to the public of use since 1945 of tax dollars by the Illinois and
other state agricultural experiment stations in the continuous endeavor
to provide a technology insuring that adequate food and fiber can be
supplied by all of agriculture. The report deals solely with making pub-
lic the results of the research investigations that the public sponsors.
It leaves to others the assay of benefits to the public from the develop-
ment and application of the resulting technology.

The agricultural research system in the United States and its cor-
ollary system for informing agricultural producers and others who use
agricultural information of its findings are probably the best combina-
tion in the world for the purpose. It would be an enormous task to
review the accomplishments of that research, but serious students of
the situation agree that the returns from such research have exceeded
by many times the amounts invested in it and that huge benefits to all
parts of society have accrued from the work. The achievements of the
Illinois station alone would make an impressive list.

The purpose of agricultural research has been to improve the tech-
nology used in the production, harvesting, processing, marketing, de-
livery, and utilization of food and fiber crops to the benefit of rural
life and the economic welfare of the consumer. Since the establishment
in 1875 of the first state agricultural experiment station in New Haven,
Connecticut, the industrialization of America and the expansion of its
economic system have profoundly changed commercial agriculture and
its role in America. Today, it not only produces sufficient basic food
and fiber items to meet our own needs but it is a major producer of
exports, partially offsetting the enormous negative trade balance for
foreign oil.

Because the research is designed for such a practical purpose, the
results of research from the beginning of the system have tended to be
published in journals and other sources that are readily available to the

8 — BULLETIN NO. 762

industry (20*), resulting in some isolation from a readership by other
scientists in biology and medicine (23). Some of the societies or associa-
tions designed for exchange of information and publication of research
with agricultural crops and animal species have existed for years and
antedate many of the present more commonly recognized scientific
journals. There has resulted an enormous, basically rich scientific litera-
ture largely unexplored by scientists outside the field.

Although the overall utilitarian quality of the work has been recog-
nized, there have been few techniques available for measuring the rela-
tive effectiveness and efficiency of individual elements of the research
establishment. It is relatively easy to evaluate the performance of an
individual scientist, and it is easy also to identify scientific "stars" in
an organization. But administrators have found it more difficult to
measure the quality of their staff against that of others doing similar
work.

One practical measure that can be used is the publication of scien-
tific papers. Publications are usually the only tangible and readily quan-
tifiable immediate products of research. Acceptance of an article for
publication in a journal, especially a journal published by a scientific
society or association of scientists, usually involves careful review of
its scientific merit by a committee of peers. This kind of peer review
sets a floor for the scientific merits, techniques, and objectivity of the
work reported in the paper, although it cannot vouch for the accuracy
of the data presented or for the validity of the conclusions drawn.

Publication of scientific papers is the measure used in the studies
reported here of research productivity and efficiency at the Illinois
Agricultural Experiment Station. Two of the studies compare Illinois
with other experiment stations and one is internal to the Illinois station.

The Agricultural Research System in the United States

The Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station is a part of a system
unique in the world for generating and distributing new knowledge
about agriculture and rural life. Every social and political system through
history has given some attention to agriculture and food and to scien-
tific study and application of new knowledge to improve and maintain
the food supply. Other nations preceded the United States in setting up
publicly supported experiment stations and others established federal
bureaucracies to deal with agriculture, but no nation put them together
with a formal and informal educational system in such a manner and

*A11 such numbers refer to "References Cited," later in this publication.

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 9

with such resources as the United States to generate opportunities for
the common man to own land and provide him the ability to farm it.
The system was begun by Congress during the Civil War and expanded
with the cooperation of state legislatures (13). Each unit of the system
was established in response to different priorities set by society as it
grew. During the twentieth century we have seen increasing research
by industries related to agriculture, often emphasizing the development
of an idea for operational production systems and use of their own
products.

The Land- Grant System. In 1862 Congress through the Morrill
Act assigned ownership of government land to the states to develop
colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts. The University of Illinois
was established under this act on March 2, 1868.

U.S. Department of Agriculture. The present USDA grew out of
an agency established in 1862 to work for the improvement of agricul-
ture throughout the country. Its functions have been extremely varied
over the years, but it has contributed to the development of research
through research centers, regional laboratories, and cooperation with
state and other agencies.

State Agricultural Experiment Stations. The Hatch Act in 1887
established agricultural experiment stations at the land-grant colleges.
At that time few agriculturists were familiar with the principles of
scientific agriculture, and the new land-grant schools were not yet
equipped to make substantial contributions to agricultural science (23).
The Hatch Act was passed to educate and equip a corps of scientists to
learn what to teach about agriculture and rural life ( 13).

On its establishment in 1868, the University of Illinois was man-
dated by the Illinois legislature to conduct research with and for farm-
ers. Its administrators became leaders in the national movement to
establish in each state some formal organization for agricultural re-
search. The Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station was formally es-
tablished at the University of Illinois on March 21, 1888, soon after the
Congress passed the Hatch Act. Publicly supported research is conducted
by it and 51 other state stations (two states have two each), by stations
in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and the District of Columbia,
by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and by other non-land-grant
universities.

Under the Hatch Act and other acts passed by Congress relating to
agricultural research, the federal government supplies some money to
each state for agricultural research, of which any amount above a spec-

10 — BULLETIN NO. 762

ified minimum must be offset dollar for dollar by state funding. In
Illinois approximately 35 percent of the funds expended by the experi-
ment station comes from federal appropriations (of which about two-
thirds are Hatch and Mclntire-Stennis allocations), and nearly half
from the state of Illinois. The balance comes from gifts, grants, con-
tracts, and other sources.

Extension Service. Unlike most industrial technology, the tech-
nology that supports agricultural production often must be tailored to
the specific needs of individual farmers with unique production cir-
cumstances and capabilities. Such tailored technology must come from
principles developed by research done in the regions and states where
it is to be used. That is one of the great strengths of the state agricul-
tural experiment station system.

Although not responsible for conducting research, the cooperative
extension services have been a key link in getting the results of research
to those who can use them and in the sort of tailored form needed by
individual farmers. In 1914 Congress enacted the Smith-Lever Act,
which established extension services in agriculture and home economics
at each state land-grant college of agriculture. Extension people gather
research results, deliver the results to the people who can use them, and
often help the people organize to put them to use. They also bring back
problems from the field for researchers to work on. At Illinois re-
searchers often take part in extension activities and report their work
in a down-to-earth form to those who can apply their results. Some
primarily extension faculty members hold part-time appointments in
the agricultural experiment station.

Cooperative Research. All states, including Illinois, do much re-
search in cooperation with other agencies. The states of the North
Central Region, of which Illinois is a member, and the U.S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture cooperate in regional research, examining problems
for which a multi-state basis can give a better answer. In fact, Congress
stipulated in 1955 that above an amount permitted originally by the act
of 1946 that initiated regional research, up to 25 percent of all increases
in Hatch funding beyond that date should be expended in regional
research. The Illinois station also cooperates with agricultural industries,
which support some of the research by unrestricted gifts, by contract,
or by grants in support of research proposed by a station investigator.
Other state agencies, like the Illinois Department of Agriculture and
the Illinois Natural History Survey, also work with the Illinois Agricul-
tural Experiment Station.

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 11

Organization of Research at the Illinois Station

The Agricultural Experiment Station is one of four major divisions
of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Agricul-
ture. The director's office coordinates all matters relating to the research
of the college, prepares budgets, maintains liaison with the U.S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture and with other administrative units, and makes
reports of its activities and progress.

The research is done in twelve research units, all but two of which
are in the College of Agriculture. Scientists are staff members of their
own particular unit. The units include:

Department of Agricultural Economics

Department of Agricultural Engineering

Agricultural Entomology, a part of the Illinois Natural History Sur-
vey but receiving some Agricultural Experiment Station support

Department of Agronomy

Department of Animal Science

Department of Dairy Science

Department of Food Science

Department of Forestry

Department of Horticulture

Department of Plant Pathology

School of Human Resources and Family Studies (formerly known
as the Department of Home Economics)

Veterinary Research, an organization in the College of Veterinary
Medicine receiving support for certain research functions from
the Agricultural Experiment Station

Each funded research and the experiments, investigations, or sur-
veys undertaken for it are done on a project basis. The proposal for
research originates with a principal investigator who, from his or her
background and experience and his or her interactions with other scien-
tists and colleagues in the extension service, decides that a particular
problem is worth pursuing. Procedures, approvals, assignment of fund-
ing, and business and reporting operations conform to long-established
requirements of the University of Illinois, the Illinois state government,
the wishes of the grantor if private funds are involved, and the U.S.
government if its funds are to be used. Federal funding may emanate
from many different agencies and under many congressional bills en-
acted over time, so the rules vary widely. However, since the original
Hatch enactment, most of the federal support to agricultural research
has traditionally been a direct grant under that act to the director of the

12 — BULLETIN NO. 762

state agricultural experiment station for study of local problems. The
amount of funds has been allocated to each station on the basis of the
ratio of rural and urban population and has little relation to the im-
portance of the state's agriculture. From 1946 to 1975 for the Illinois
station, the proportion of the total station's expenditures furnished by
Hatch funds averaged 17.7 percent. In 1978 expenditures from state
appropriations were about 2^ times the Hatch appropriation, which
Congress requires must be, at least, matched dollar for dollar above the
minimum of $90,000 it provides.

A requirement common to all federal allocations, however, is that the
agency must approve the nature of the research and often the procedures
to be used in resolving the problem; an audit review and approval of
all expenditures are always required.

Other federal support of university research is by grant or contract.
With contract support, arrangements are more formal and binding on
the work to be performed, often stipulated to the last detail. Most such
government allocations for research at universities are awarded to indi-
viduals or teams of investigators on a project basis, and to the univer-
sity employer of the scientists solely for the purpose of the approved
project.

Proposals for research projects to be supported in whole or in part
by Hatch or Mclntire-Stennis funds (both federal funds) must, by
Washington insistence imposed over time, go through a review process
that includes review by peer groups within the department or research
unit, approval by the head of the department or unit, submission to the
director's office, additional review by that office, approval by the director,
and finally review and approval by the state station research monitoring
arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The process is time-con-
suming but effective in centralized top-level bureaucratic control. It
establishes a collaborative decision assuring that the research will meet
a common need and will use techniques recognized by other scientists.
However, the process means that the scope and duration of the research
are likely to be reduced below the researcher's request, that new ideas or
approaches are likely to be squeezed out, and that the research won't
be as much fun to do. It is the perfect formula for the bureaucratic "dead
hand on discovery" described by Darlington (7) and an entrapment
only the most adroit of state station directors can avoid. It is easiest to
resist when state and gift funds clearly outweigh federal funds !

An important useful service provided the state stations is the
USDA's system of on-site review of departmental or subject matter
research progress. Earlier this was done annually by the USDA's Office
of Experiment Stations, more recently by the Cooperative State Re-

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 13

search Service on a four-year schedule, and since 1976 by the USDA's
Science and Education Administration-Cooperative Research (USDA-
SEA-CR). Under the present agency specifications, a team of subject
matter research specialists led by an employee of the federal agency
but made up otherwise of peers in the subject matter examines in detail
the research in progress. Before leaving the site after three or four
days of examination, the team reports to the department or subject
matter group and the station administrator its views of strengths and
weaknesses of the program of research and its effectiveness. Later it
files with the station and the USDA a written report of its findings.
Such review teams are meticulous in avoiding ranking of stations as
we attempt to do here.

Scientific Publications as a Measure
of Research Productivity

In considering the number of articles published by an institution to
be an index of its relative productivity, one must assume that the mill-
run average of scientific and practical significance of the papers pub-
lished is about the same for each institution studied. One can question
the validity of such an assumption. Still, that is more likely to be the
situation for scientific manuscripts subjected to review by editorial
committees of peers before acceptance than it is for manuscripts not
so reviewed. The review process places a floor for the level of merit
for that particular journal.

There obviously are real differences in the scientific excellence or
ultimate practical significance of the large numbers of papers published
in the various subject matters of science pertaining to agriculture. The
problem is that there is no practical way to make objective evaluations
now or to assign acceptable numbers to any value judgments that are
made. Attempts have been made to assess economic returns on in-
vestment in a broad program of research on a single commodity (3, 4,
9, 10, 16, 21, 22, 29), but to assess the contribution of an individual paper
requires a time lag of years, by which time the value of the assessment
as an aid in deciding about investment in particular research will have
passed.

Because of the large number of publications included in this study,
it is reasonable to assume for any station or research unit that excep-
tional research reports are balanced by mediocre ones, that the peaks
and valleys level out. Although far from perfect, the system of counting
publications has been probably the only practical way for the Illinois
station to make comparisons. It is true that some institutions may be

14 — BULLETIN NO. 762

more strict than others in what they will consider and report as a scien-
tific publication; this fact may result in some aberrations, but we do
not think it skews the data appreciably.

Source of National Data on Publications Output

The major source of data from the states was the annual summaries
prepared by the USDA Office of Experiment Stations for 1945-1959
and by the USDA Cooperative State Research Service for 1960-1975
(1, 2). Each station reported annually its technical journal articles, bul-
letins, circulars, and similar output of the station. Only the number
of technical journal articles published was used in our study as evidence
of scientific productivity. There were some blanks in the data when a
station failed to file a report with the USDA (as Illinois failed to do
in some years before 1950 because of a dispute between Illinois and
the USDA).

National average salary levels, staff numbers, funding, and total
funding sources were also part of the OES and CSRS reports. Those
data did not deal with individual subject matter fields and did not at-
tempt to compare and rank the stations accordingly.

Study I: A Review of Station Publication Numbers
Reported by OES and CSRS

This review of experiment station productivity began with an analy-
sis of the OES and CSRS annual reports from 1945 through 1975. *
The annual number of technical journal articles was compared with
the number of scientific workers at each station and with the federal
and state dollars allocated annually for research at the stations.

Total investment in research at the state agricultural experiment
stations was 18 to 20 times as much in 1975 as in 1945, but the purchas-
ing power of the dollars declined steadily during the period (Fig. 1).
In terms of constant value dollars (15), the investment by the federal
government and the state increased about 7^/2 times in the period. Fund-
ing per scientist increased and the number of scientists more than
doubled. Publications by all stations increased throughout the period in
a fairly consistent relationship to constant-value dollar inputs.

*In the OES and CSRS reports, years are fiscal years; fiscal year 1946, for
example, ran from July 1, 1945 through June 30, 1946. In 1977 the new title for
the USDA agency for relations with the state agricultural experiment stations
became Science and Education Administration-Cooperative Research (SEA-CR).
It discontinued reports of total funding and publication output of each state
station with the 1975 fiscal year.

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — IS

Index

U.S. Agricultural
Experiment Stations
(1945=1)

70

75

Figure 1. Indexes of changes in funds, staff, and publication output for
U.S. agricultural experiment stations, 1945-1975.

Index

Illinois Agricultural
Experiment Station
(1945 = 1)

K^. '"»

Constant fe<Jetal

65

70

75

Figure 2. Indexes of changes in funds, staff, and publication output
the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station, 1945-1975.

for

16 — BULLETIN NO. 762

The pattern for the Illinois station is similar to that for all stations
except for the lesser increase in state dollars near the end of the period
(Fig. 2). When Illinois is compared with all state stations, it is seen
that Illinois received proportionately less total money and operated with
relatively fewer scientific staff, but produced relatively more technical
articles (Fig. 3). Illinois is consistently the nation's third or fourth pro-
ducer of agricultural commodities, measured by dollar value, yet it puts
relatively less into its agricultural research system than does the nation
as a whole.

We next considered the position of the Illinois station in the top ten
stations in total technical journal publications in the three decades from
1946 to 1975 (Table 1).

In the first decade, 1946-1955, Illinois did not report to OES for
the first three years of the period. Although it ranked ninth on the basis
of the total reported for the decade, it ranked fourth on an average
annual basis for the reporting years. In the second decade it ranked

Index

1 975 Compared

with 1 945

All

?0-

All Stations

Stations

Illinois

1 R —

Station

Illinois

Station

Illinois

4 n

Station

I U —

All

Stations

5_

•f'^VH;'-:^

?\?!^55

H§8i

*v^r-;-':t

Hi

SG*vjES3

^S|8^5!

P?|^»

,i";Vi':-Vj.^-"'

t||:- i|

All
Stations Sn?ls

0

*S^

•r^V.Y.-.v^

^^

vAfet^i

|

Federal $
3 = Constant $

State $

Scientific
Staff

Technical

Journal

Articles

Figure 3. Rates of growth in funds, staff, and publication output for the
Illinois station and for all state agricultural experiment stations from 1945
to 1975.

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 17

fourth, and in the most recent decade it ranked sixth. In each decade
the top ten stations in technical publication output produced more than
half of the total publication output for all stations. Twelve states in the
North Central Region — Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan,
Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota,
and Wisconsin — produced 30 percent of the national output of state
publications.

Concerned as we were at the time with the relative position of the
llinois station in productivity and with its financial support as compared
with that of other states, the data were initially compiled for states as a
unit. Thus we lost the distinction for Connecticut between its agricul-
tural experiment stations at New Haven (the first in the United States)

Table 1. Number of Technical Journal Articles by the 10 Leading

Agricultural Experiment Stations Reported to the USDA Office

of Experiment Stations and the Cooperative State

Research Service, 1946-1975

1946-1955

1956-1965

1 New York

5,900

1 California

. 11,745

2 California

. . . . 5,677

2 New York

5,376

3 Wisconsin

. . . . 2,689

3 Wisconsin ,

3,369

4 Texas

. . . . 1,243

4 ILLINOIS ,

3,036

5 Florida

. ... 1,230

5 Texas

, 2,908

6 Minnesota

1,226

6 Iowa

1,994

7 Kansas

. . . . 1,212

7 Minnesota

1,741

8 Iowa ,

, . . . 1,140

8 Indiana

1,568

9 ILLINOIS'

, . . . 1,045

9 Michigan ,

1,566

10 Washington

, . . . 996

10 Virginia

, 1,507

Top ten total

. 22,358

. 34,810

Percent of all stations

, . . . 63.9

58.8

Total for all stations

,... 34,971

59,211

1966-1975

Total 1946-1975

1 California 15,254

2 New York 6,968

3 Texas 6,874

4 Wisconsin 6,317

5 Oregon 4,338

6 ILLINOIS 4,313

7 Georgia 4,035

8 Kansas 3,518

9 Minnesota 3,450

10 Michigan 3,328

Top ten total 58,395

Percent of all stations 52.7

Total for all stations 110,807

1 California

2 New York

3 Wisconsin .

4 Texas

5 ILLINOIS*

6 Minnesota .

7 Iowa

8 Oregon . . .

9 Michigan . .
10 Kansas

32,676
18,244
12,375
11,025
8,394

6,417
5,896
5,790
5,770
5,497

112,084

54.7

204,989

• Total for three years not reported.

18 — BULLETIN NO. 762

and at Storrs, and for New York the distinction between its two sta-
tions, one at Geneva and the larger one at Cornell University, Ithaca.
The three California locations, Berkeley, Davis, and Riverside, were
administered as one unit, and were so reported to OES and CSRS. In
the discussion which follows detailing state or federal funding for state
agricultural experiment stations and mentioning rank order, the reader
should recognize this colligation for those states.

Annual OES and CSRS reports show wide divergence among the
states in the dollars expended and the number of scientist years devoted
annually to agricultural research. Such differences suggested that at
least a part of the reason for the rank order position of a state's station
or stations was explained by differences in those two primary inputs.

Wondering whether stations differed in total publication output for
reasons not reflected by the number of state or federal dollars invested
and the number of scientists dedicated to the research, we studied the
publication record of all stations for a single year, 1975, in relation to
their funding and staff size.

By appropriate statistical techniques, the influence of one or another
of these measured inputs could be treated as a constant for all stations
and the effect of the remaining variables studied. The effect of such
data treatments on the total publication output of the ten leading pub-
lishers for the one year, 1975, is shown in Table 2. Though the Cali-
fornia station employed the largest scientific staff that year, statistical
adjustment for that part did not change the relative position of the
California station as the producer of the largest number of technical

Table 2. The 10 Leading State Agricultural Experiment Stations

for 1975, Based on Technical Journal Articles Reported to USDA

Cooperative State Research Service

Number oi
technical
journal

Adjusted for

articles

Staff size

Federal dollars

State dollars

1 California . . . <

1,720

California

California

\Visconsin

1,023

Wisconsin

Wisconsin

Tennessee

3 New York ...

911

New York

New York

California

4 Texas

731

Tennessee

Oregon

New York

625

Texas

Kansas

ILLINOIS

6 ILLINOIS . . ,

601

ILLINOIS

Minnesota

Oregon

513

Georgia

Michigan

Michigan

8 Oregon ,

409

Michigan

Nebraska

Indiana

481

Minnesota

ILLINOIS

Texas

471

Indiana

Tennessee

Utah

Total all stations

.... 13,526

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 19

publications from its research. So too statistical adjustment for con-
stant federal dollar inputs that year to all stations did not shift the
relative California publication output. However, when the differences
in state dollar inputs were statistically controlled, the adjusted position
of California was downward, indicating that that state in 1975 put more
state dollars into each of its publications than did those above it in the
adjusted rank array.

Tennessee ranked high in publication output for that year and ap-
pears for the first time in the tables as a result of an uncommonly high
single-year reported output. The figure reported by CSRS was 625 for
1975, but the average was only 124 for the nine prior years of the
1966-1975 decade. The Illinois position for the single year was not
changed much from its relative position for the decade. The shift down-
ward in its relative position by holding the federal dollars as a constant
for all stations indicates that Illinois was more dependent on the federal
source of funding for its relative position than most states. This reflects
the relatively poor funding that the state provides in support of its agri-
cultural research.

Wisconsin which had ranked third and fourth in technical journal
publications in the three decades (Table 1) was shown for the year
1975 to be first when adjustments were made for state dollar inputs
(Table 2). Later findings show that Wisconsin used its state dollars
effectively in other years; possible reasons for this effectiveness are
discussed later, beginning on page 28.

Study II: Peer-Edited Journal Articles

When summations of CSRS-reported station publication output in
the decade of the 1960's were first used by the author, they had low
credibility within the University of Illinois as indicative of how effec-
tively the scientists and departments within the Illinois Agricultural
Experiment Station were performing their responsibilities in agricul-
tural research. At the same time the university publicists were placing
great credence on the periodic opinion surveys of the American Council
on Education, especially when a department involved in the survey was
ranked high nationally by peer opinion. Agricultural subject matters
were never considered by these trend-setting reports of the American
Council on Education.1 It seemed there ought to be a more objective way
than peer opinion of measuring merit and effectiveness of research, if
not teaching, units.

1 Not until the Ladd-Lipset survey of 1979 (The Chronicle of Higher Educa~
tion, January 15, 1979) did agriculture as a college receive attention (25).

20— BULLETIN NO. 762

Study Ha: Journal Articles — Animal Agriculture, 1958-1960

In 1961 the author, with graduate student assistance and support of
his departmental colleagues, conducted studies on the research output in
five scientific journals dealing with domestic animals: American Journal
of Veterinary Research, Journal of Animal Science, Journal of Dairy
Science, Poultry Science, and Veterinary Medicine (since changed to
Small Animal Clinician). Full-length articles, technical communications,
and abstracts of research reports were all counted and credited to the
institution or organization employing the author or authors. A paper
coauthored by scientists from different research institutions was credited
to each employer at a rate proportional to the number of authors em-
ployed by that institution, regardless of the order of authors.

The summary for 4,119 tides published in the five journals during
the three years 1958, 1959, and 1960 showed that the USDA as the em-
ployer of the publishing scientist ranked first with 336 papers. The next
nine were the state agricultural experiment stations of Michigan (238),
Illinois (236), Wisconsin (221), New York, Cornell (194), Iowa (185),
Ohio (184), California (176), Texas (161), and Washington (144).

Study lib: Journal Articles and Opinion Survey — Animal
Agriculture, 1965-1967

A second journal survey of the research productivity in the field of
the larger domestic animals was initiated in 1968. Poultry research was
not included as it was thought then to be too heavily concentrated in
only a few states (see for example Reference 5). Thus the journal
Poultry Science was not reviewed as to the source of its published ar-
ticles. The period selected for study was 1965, 1966, and 1967. All com-
munications for the period were counted and credit allocated to em-
ployers as earlier described. Confining our interest to the USDA and
the state agricultural experiment stations, we ranked them in order by
the number of articles published by their scientists.

Simultaneously we planned a study to compare the research publi-
cation output by states in the four journals for the 1965-1967 period,
with the opinion of a substantial number of colleagues as to their rank-
ing of the stations as scientific and teaching centers.

A panel of 104 animal scientists and veterinarians was selected on
the basis of their distinguished research on large animals. At the time
of the survey, ten of the 104 were directly employed by the USDA.
Wisconsin employed six of the panelists, and fewer numbers were at
any of the other agricultural experiment stations. Seventeen of those

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 21

Table 3. Numbers of Technical Journal Articles Reported by the 12

Leading State Agricultural Experiment Stations to the USDA

Cooperative State Research Service as Having Been Published

in Fiscal Years 1967, 1968, and 1969a

1967

1968

1969

Total

. 1,640

1,679

1,461

4,780

New York

529

709

664

1,902

272

625

897

Texas

430

1,372

539

2,341

ILLINOIS

433

345

443

1221

300

329

352

981

Iowa

259

224

253

736

281

364

416

1,061

247

430

145

822

Kansas

191

308

359

858

North Carolina

215

234

254

703

250

257

330

837

Total all stations

9,021

10,751

9,445

29,217

• The time span for the three fiscal years, July 1, 1966-June 30, 1969, begins six months
earlier and ends six months earlier than the 1967-1969, three-year calendar-year span of
the peer-edited journal study.

selected were veterinarians; practically all of the nonveterinarians had
earned the Ph.D. Biographical data from American Men of Science,
available on about three-fourths of the members of the panel, showed
that average age was 50 years. Cornell was most frequently cited as the
institution where panel members had earned their doctorates, followed
in order by Wisconsin, Missouri, Illinois, and Michigan State.1

In the belief that respondents would be less inclined to evaluate or
rank institutions from a list of 50 entities, five sublists of ten institu-
tions were constructed. Every fifth institution on the master list, which
was a ranking according to publications output, was placed on one of
the sublists. For example, sublist 3 was composed of the 3rd, 8th, 13th,
. . . , and 48th institutions from the master list. Institutions were then
arranged in alphabetical order within the sublists. One deviation from
this pattern was that the Oregon and Virginia stations, with identical
numbers of publications, were placed in the same sublist.

Each panel member received the five sublists but was not informed
of publications output or on what basis institutions were assigned to the
lists. Respondents were asked, in an accompanying letter, to:

. . . make a value judgment and rank the institutions in numerical
order one through ten (one being the highest order of excellence
and ten being the lowest within any one list) based on your idea

1 Stations at New Haven, Connecticut, and Geneva, New York, as well as those
in Alaska and Puerto Rico were not included in this analysis.

22 — BULLETIN NO. 762

of their productivity. Productivity should be assessed in terms of
quantity and quality of research published, its originality, and
the quality of graduate student produced as estimated from your
experience.

In the special case of the USD A, respondents were asked to:

. . . consider primarily the quantity, quality, and originality of its
published research in your field.

Of the 104 selected panelists, 85 (82 percent) returned their survey
materials as requested. Names of the panelists were not associated with
their ranking of institutions; survey materials were entirely anonymous
when returned by respondents. Results are summarized in Table 4.

The dominance of a few institutions in research in the large-animal
field is obvious. The list of leading institutions is similar to that found
for the 1958-1960 period, though that survey included poultry science.

The magnitude of intraclass correlation coefficients (TI) can be
taken as a measure of the uniformity of opinions in the ranking of in-
stitutions within sublists. Coefficients significantly larger than 0.5 indi-
cate that variability of rankings was greater among the ten institutions
than among the 851 opinions within each institution. Four out of five
coefficients were larger than 0.5, but only two significantly so (p < .05).
The lowest intraclass correlation was recorded in sublist 4 which in-
cluded both Oregon and Virginia, suggesting that institutions with
equal publications within a sublist presented a more difficult ranking
task for panelists.

Standard deviations of rankings indicate the variability of opinions
as to the ranking of individual institutions. Opinions varied widely for
several institutions, notably the USDA and Georgia, but a relatively
firm consensus was reached in the ranking of Cornell, Ohio, Iowa, Pur-
due, and Wisconsin within respective sublists. Although respondents
were asked to rank institutions on qualitative grounds as well as quan-
titative output of research publications, difference in quantity of publi-
cations is shown to account for about 69 percent of the variability in
subjective rankings. When the USDA was omitted, publications output
accounted for 94 percent of variability in rankings of the state agricul-
tural experiment stations. These data could be interpreted to mean

(a) that respondents were highly influenced in the ranking task by
their perception of the quantity of research output of institutions, or

(b) that respondents did accurately gage the quality factor and that
quantity and quality in research do in fact go hand in hand.

Two institutions were noticeably underranked in relation to their

1 One respondent declined to rank institutions in sublist 3, leaving 84 opinions
for that sublist.

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 23

Table 4. Publications Output and Peer Ranking Data of Institutions

Institution

Number of Opinion Opinion
publications mean standard Modal
1965-1967 rank deviation rank

Sublist 1 — ri = 0.66

USDA 368 3.36 3.21 1

Michigan 175 1.88 1.09 1

Minnesota 115 3.38 1.57 3

Pennsylvania 85 3.84 1.86 3

Oklahoma 71 4.39 2.09 4

Maryland 50 5.81 1.49 6

Arkansas 35 7.68 1.90 8

Alabama 26 7.85 1.52 8

Massachusetts 16 7.61 2.34 9

Vermont 8 9.00 1.29 10

Sublist 2 — ri = 0.70

Wisconsin 204 1.54 .93 1

California 171 1.93 1.08 2

Georgia 96 5.90 3.64 5

Kentucky 84 3.98 1.85 3

Tennessee 60 4.80 1.55 4

Connecticut 47 6.40 1.89 8

Utah 34 6.15 2.17 5,6,7

Clemson (South Carolina) 23 7.18 2.00 8

Maine 14 8.50 1.52 9

Delaware 5 9.00 1.60 10

Sublist 3 — r! = 0.76*

ILLINOIS 202 1.93 1.41 1

Iowa 162 1.60 .86 1

Nebraska 92 4.38 1.92 4

North Carolina 82 3.68 1.91 3

Colorado 58 4.76 1.48 4,5

Louisiana 47 6.31 1.81 6

South Dakota 29 7.04 1.68 7

Montana 23 8.23 1.36 9

New Mexico 13 8.62 1.30 9

New Hampshire 3 8.39 2.27 10

Sublist 4 — ri = 0.45

Cornell (New York) 189 1.12 .46 1

Ohio 156 2.14 .72 2

Oregon 80 4.67 1.75 4

Virginia 80 4.79 2.50 5

Washington 54 4.68 1.62 3

Rutgers (New Jersey) 43 5.19 2.31 4

West Virginia 28 6.93 1.54 7

Nevada 22 8.79 1.44 10

Mississippi 12 9.27 1.52 10

North Dakota 2 7.99 2.52 9

Sublist 5 — n = 0.76'

Purdue (Indiana) 176 1.50 .93 1

Missouri 122 3.02 1.85 3

Kansas 85 3.74 2.07 4

Texas 76 3.62 1.57 5

Florida 54 4.44 1.81 5

Arizona 42 5.92 1.61 6

Wyoming 27 7.29 1.44 7

Hawaii 18 9.01 1.51 10

Idaho 11 7.42 2.18 7

Rhode Island 1 8.89 1.54 10

• Correlation is significantly (p < .05) different from O.SO.

24 — BULLETIN NO. 762

output of publications. It cannot be discerned from these data whether
the USDA and Georgia were undervalued for reasons of quality because
of a time lag in recognition of prominence or because of other con-
founding factors. It has already been noted that variability of opinions
concerning these institutions was greater than for any others. Also in-
cluded in Table 4 is the modal, or most frequently given, ranking of
each institution.

Study lie: Full-Length Journal Articles — Ten Agricultural
Subject Matters, 1967-1969

The two analyses of research productivity of the animal agriculture
research units of the USDA and the state agricultural experiment sta-
tions suggested that the technique was at least as useful for our pur-
poses as an opinion survey. CSRS reports on publication output by
stations did not provide the evidence on departmental competence re-
quired by the University of Illinois when in the late 1960's it began its
period of extensive self-examination under the faculty Council on Pro-
gram Evaluation. Therefore a project was initiated in 1971 to expand
the study of peer-edited journal publications to all subject matters in
agriculture represented by the ten Illinois departments and two research
units in the station.

The study included 55 sources of publication output (50 of which
were the agricultural experiment stations of the 50 states); ten subject
matter areas (based on departments and units in the Illinois station, ex-
cept that Animal Science, Dairy Science, and Veterinary Research were
combined); and three years (1967, 1968, and 1969). Analyses were made
of 66 peer-edited journals (see Appendix), 31,911 full-length articles,
and roughly 75,000 authors. Credit for multiple-author publications was
assayed by an equal share to each employer, regardless of the order of
authors. Analysis showed that the distribution of these observed data
(x) was normalized by the transformation Vx ~t~ 0.5.

Experiment station authors published 34.2 percent of the articles in-
cluded in the study, and others in non-experiment station departments
from the same land-grant university contributed 6.3 percent; 40.5 per-
cent of the articles therefore came from land-grant universities. The
rest of the articles were divided as follows :

Non-land-grant colleges and universities 13.2 percent

U.S. Department of Agriculture 12.3 percent

Federal other than USDA 4.8 percent

Private research institutes 6.1 percent

Foreign country nationals . 23.1 percent

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 25

Year-to-year variability of output was slight among the 50 states and
the ten subject-matter areas, with intraclass correlations of 0.97 and
0.98 respectively. Thus nearly as precise an estimate was made of the
relative position of the stations of the 50 states for output of peer-
edited publications during one year as was found for the three years.

When the output was analyzed for total peer-edited publications,
publications per full-time staff, and average cost per publication and the
top ten ranked by each of these criteria or by them combined, many of
the same leaders revealed in the CSRS study again came to the fore.

The peer-edited publication analysis also permitted verification of
the validity of using CSRS reports to measure individual station pub-
lication output from 1967 to 1969; 35.9 percent of the publications
reported to CSRS were accounted for in the 66 peer-edited journals re-
viewed, and for Illinois 40.5 percent were accounted for in those jour-
nals. Correlation between rank orders of the stations derived from each
study for the three-year period was high (0.9198), indicating that the
two systems were similar. The variance of one method explains about
85 percent of the variance of the other. (See Tables 3 and 6 for the
rankings of the top stations under either analysis for the comparable
time period.)

Evidence clearly indicates that the agricultural experiment stations
of the 50 states vary significantly in scientific output. Although it is often
thought that there must be a minimum critical mass for optimum scien-
tific output, in the peer-edited journals reviewed the relationship between
station staff numbers and output is not high, explaining less than 25
percent of the variance of station output.

The federal dollars invested under the Hatch Act in state experi-
ment station research, which vary little from state to state, bear no
statistical relationship to a station's output of peer-edited publications
though obviously paying for a lot of them. There is, however, a direct
and significant relationship between total and state dollars and the sta-
tion's publication output.

Illinois Rank by Subject Matter Areas — Peer-Edited Journals

Our study of peer-edited journals gave us an opportunity to com-
pare the research productivity of Illinois departments and units with
the publication output in the same subject matters at other stations.
Since Illinois has fewer departments or research units than most sta-
tions, subject matter classifications at Illinois apply only approximately
to departmental designations of other stations. For some stations several
units had to be combined into one to correspond to the Illinois divisions.

26 — BULLETIN NO. 762

For animal agriculture, for example, excluding its economics, use
of two broad categories of subject matter, animal production (animal
sciences) and animal protection (veterinary medicine) permitted sort-
ing publications into recognized areas of research despite wide variations
in department designations and organization at the state stations. For
twelve stations the animal sciences publication output in the 66 journals
was combined for three departments and for nine stations the output
of two departments. No journal dealing specifically with veterinary
medicine was included in the 66 journals surveyed. Still, 6.7 percent of
the papers published by the Veterinary Research unit of the Illinois
Agricultural Experiment Station in 1967-1969 were published in the
66 journals.

In these distributions of publications to subject matter categories at
each station, some irreconcilable conflicts with the Illinois designations
were found which were accumulated under an "other" classification.
These included meteorology, biochemistry, molecular biology, botany,
statistics, microbiology, viticulture, agricultural education, landscape
architecture, basic genetics, conservation, environmental science, jour-
nalism, Experiment Station, and perhaps others; all of these papers
were credited to the totals for each agricultural experiment station.

The results of the study by subject matters are shown in Table 5,
including the Illinois contribution to the subject matter totals and the
Illinois ranking by subject matters, which in all cases except that of the
animal sciences and "other" are department or research unit designa-

Table 5. Number of Full-Length Peer-Edited Papers Published in 66

Journals, 1967-1969, by Subject Matters, Illinois Number, and Illinois

Rank Among States

Subject

Total
number

Illinois
number

Illinois
percent
of total

National
rank order

Agricultural economics • • • • •

389.37

255

6.5

5

607.10

28.78

4.7

4

Agricultural entomology . . .

. . . 1,333.26

48.33

3.6

4

. . . 1,890.98

93.68

5.0

5

. . . 2,027.59

131.26

6.5

1

645.41

41.67

6.5

8

400.23

14.00

3.5

7

244.80

2.11

.9

29

Horticulture •••«••«••

572.68

46.57

8.1

4

... 1,292.44

53.65

4.2

7

Other

. . . 1,511.32

9.9

<.l

b

Total

... 10,915.18

446.85

4.1

6

• Includes work in animal science, dairy science, and veterinary research.
b Not applicable.

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 27

tions. The Illinois data reflect national patterns of publication output
by subject matters for the 1967-1969 period. The Illinois station's con-
tribution was 4.1 percent of the total by state agricultural experiment
stations for the period. The broad categories of animal sciences and
agronomy had the most publications. Referring to later tables, especially
Table 10, one can see that that pattern of publication output for the
several subject matters at Illinois persisted through 1978. It is likely
that the pattern has persisted for the nation at large as well, but there
is no evidence available to test the conjecture.

It is easy, of course, to count the publications and rank the states
simply on the basis of the numbers. It is much more complicated to
show whether the differences in rank are statistically significant. But
once statistical procedures have been used, the apparent certainty im-
plied by a ranking simply on the basis of number is erased. The use of
statistical analysis also reduces arguments and disagreements.

The problem can be illustrated by the final analysis relating numbers
of peer-edited publications to numbers of scientists and to total dollars
invested (Table 6). For the mean annual output per subject matter unit
by states for the three-year period, Illinois ranked sixth but could not
be distinguished statistically as being significantly different from either
the second-ranking state or the sixteenth with probability odds of 5 per-
cent or less that any of the differences were not due to chance. When
the output was adjusted for staff size and dollar investments, Illinois

Table 6. Rank Order of 10 Leading State Stations, by Least Square

Means of Annual Publications per Subject Matter Unit and After

Adjustment for Scientist Years and Total Dollars Invested,

1967-1969, in 66 Peer-Edited Publications

Least square
mean, annual Stalls-
public at ions tical
per subject signifi-
matter unit cance*

Adjusted
regression
constants

Statistical
significance'

1
2
3

4

5

6

7
8
9

10

California • • •

35.13
19.67

16.21
13.13
12.59
12.53

10.95
10.16
8.64
8.56

A
B

BC
BCD
BCD

BCDE

CDEF
CDEF
DEFG
DEFG

Wisconsin

. 6.29

A

B

BC
BCD
BCD

BCDE
BCDEF
CDEFG
CDEFGH
CDEFGH

Wisconsin

Indiana

3.38

New York
(2 stations)

Michigan . . . . ,

. 262

Oregon ,

2.41

ILLINOIS ...

Connecticut
(2 stations) . . .

2.38
2.23

ILLINOIS

North Carolina . .
Texas

Massachusetts

.... 2.18
1.53

Iowa

1.41

Minnesota • •

1.29

• Stations followed by the same alphabetical characters are not significantly different at the
0.05 level of P.

28 — BULLETIN NO. 762

was ranked fifth, but was not distinguishable statistically from states
ranking second through eleventh.

Adjusting for scientist years and dollars invested resulted in some
dramatic changes for some states. California was first in mean publica-
tions per subject matter area, but ranked 34th after the data were ad-
justed; New York changed from third to 31st; Texas from eighth to
44th; and Minnesota from 10th to 18th. The coefficient of determination,
R2, for this latter analysis was 0.9807.

It should be noted that the Wisconsin station again topped the rank
order listing when its output of peer-edited journal articles for the 1967-
1969 period was statistically adjusted for staff size (scientist years) and
dollar investments, just as it had in the CSRS data for the single year
1975.

The key to quality and the source of the inspiration to excellence are
not revealed by the data recorded. The Illinois station staff has per-
formed better than the product of its size and funding (see Fig. 3) and
so have others. Wisconsin has excelled at the production of outstanding
science at minimum dollar investment. Is it that the Wisconsin station
has an "atmosphere" that is subtly more conductive to research and
publication output which in the public national interest ought to be
repeated elsewhere?

No concerted effort by the author has been made to explore the ques-
tion of staff and dollar efficiency in publication output beyond observa-
tions at home and over the fence with neighbor Wisconsin. From the
data made available from the historical records, from their statistical
manipulation and analysis described herein, and from many communica-
tions with colleagues at Illinois, no consistent pattern arises throughout
the administrative units, departments, and research units that explains
the efficiency of the Illinois station. Clearly it has had overall a con-
scientious and loyal senior staff and its share of "stars."

The examination of the Wisconsin station has been much more
superficial with far fewer conversations with station leaders and scien-
tists. Only one consistent difference appears in the records from 15
deliberately scheduled conversations with colleagues at Wisconsin, most
from the animal, dairy, food, and veterinary sciences. In those conver-
sations one item came through, often as an afterthought to the question
"If I were to show you that the agricultural experiment station at the
University of Wisconsin is one of the most efficient producers of re-
search information about agriculture, to what would you attribute that
capacity?" Among scores of comments, eventually each person men-
tioned the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation funding to young
faculty for approved research projects.

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 29

It is the writer's understanding that this annual allocation of sub-
stantial funding is awarded with high priority to beginning young fac-
ulty and is continued normally for three years, during and after which
there is vigorous appraisal of progress and early performance. The
scientist is encouraged early to seek outside funding for research, the
WARF application and review serving as a useful training experience.

This policy was said to discourage appointment to tenure track by
departments or research units of young aspirants whose earlier record
might suggest them to be incapable of meeting minimum peer standards
and accustoms the beginning scientist to the need for and procedures
involved in assuring continued funding of a research career. It encour-
ages and stimulates administrative surveillance of young staff perfor-
mance. The review process for continued funding offers the appropriate
occasion for inspirational aid and performance demands antedating the
end of the customary six-year limit before permanent tenure decisions
are made. This beginning assurance of modest funding for young faculty
in agriculture to test research and scholarly capacities is considered by
all with whom the subject has been debated at Illinois, Wisconsin, or
elsewhere as being an opportunity to be envied and emulated.

Apart from revealing the specific stations with which Illinois was
competitive in specific subject matters, these analyses of peer-edited
publications for three years revealed little that had not been recognized
for the longer-time trend by the analysis of OES and CSRS data for
the states' stations as a whole during the 1946-1975 period (totals for
Illinois and for all states are shown in Figure 3). The much more de-
tailed analysis of the source of full-length peer-edited scientific papers
in the agricultural journals has yielded much more precise evidence for
comparative purposes, especially in the specifics of subject matter. It is,
however, very laborious and time-consuming to survey journals page by
page, allocating credit to the employers of authors; it is a relatively
expensive technique, not for routine use. With the development of com-
puter storage of library data and rapid retrieval, we hoped that the
authors of papers appearing in an even larger sample of prestigious
journals could be computerized as the technique of the future. However,
it was found in one test of the system in 1978 that library retrieval-of-
information services are not yet organized to record the employer of
each author. Thus a new system will have to be developed to provide
information on comparative station competence that was readily avail-
able from CSRS reports before the Science and Education Administra-
tion-Cooperative Research eliminated them in 1976.

There remained the question whether the selected journals adequately
reflected the publication outputs of subject-matter departments of the

30 — BULLETIN NO. 762

different states. There was no way to test the assertion of some that the
1967- 1969 period was not characteristic of their department's long-term
productivity without going to a great deal of additional time, expense,
and data-gathering. Being interested primarily in comparing the Illinois
subject matter units with units in other states legitimately similar, we
sought data on the total publication output of departments in the ten
top-ranking stations for 1967-1969. Such information might indicate
the sampling adequacy of the 66 journals selected for our review. How-
ever, some of these ten stations did not publish a list of publications by
their staff, and some who did publish them did not separate them by
departments. Consequently we were not able to get the data needed to
make comparisons between Illinois and other stations except for data
arising from the study of the 66 peer-edited journals. The Illinois sta-
tion has consistently reported by departments or research units, the re-
search publications, the size of the scientific staff, and the dollar invest-
ments. The analysis in Study III deals solely with the Illinois station.

Study III. The Thirty- Year Research Productivity
of the Illinois Station, Fiscal Years 1949-1978

The Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station reported annually on
its stewardship of agricultural research at the University of Illinois
until 1938. There was a long lapse in reporting before, during, and after
World War II because of that emergency. A nine-year report of the
Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station covering fiscal years 1939
through 1947 consolidated the cumulative record of the period. After a
single-year report for fiscal year 1948 was published, its reports have
been for two-year periods beginning with July 1, 1948, and ending on
June 30 on each second succeeding year. Thus to date there have been
15 consecutive biennial reports of the station beginning with the initial
one for 1948-50. The data for the following report are taken from that
series.

Changes within the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station from
1948 to 1978 were determined for each unit by compiling the number
of professorial1 staff members each year with some research appoint-
ment, the financial support, and the number of publications reported in
the biennial reports of the station, and of those, the ones published as

1 Includes assistant professors, associate professors, and professors. Beginning
with fiscal year 1965, CSRS reports give "Research personnel full time equivalent,"
which is larger than our internal system of full-time-equivalent service; a review
of our bienniums since that time indicates that had we adjusted head count to
scientist years, the basic conclusions and areas of indecisiveness would not have
changed.

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 31

full-length articles in peer-edited journals and in the 66 journals earlier
sampled for Study He.

In examining the information carried in Tables 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, it
is essential to keep in mind that many variables beside staff size and dol-
lars affect the publication of research. A major unmeasured variable is
the scientific evolutionary development of a subject matter field. Rank-
ings within the station are directly related to the types of research that
the units traditionally conduct and the degree to which the units are in-
volved in development, their size, and funding support.

Variations in the Nature of Agricultural Research

Agronomy (soils and crops at Illinois) and Horticulture traditionally
do long-term research that carries with it much demonstration and
developmental work, such as varietal development that falls just short
of getting seed of a new variety, kind, or cultivar for multiplication,
certification, and sale, all of which costs staff time but keeps the research
relevant to the needs of practitioners.

The balance between research and development of Agricultural En-
gineering activities seems to follow the same pattern but for different
reasons. Agricultural engineers must provide their own inertia for con-
tinuation of equipment development until industry can see its value and
proceed to the final stages of adaptation and public availability; the prob-
lem is to keep an idea alive until industry picks it up.

In the departments of Animal Science and Dairy Science, on the
other hand, tasks of demonstration and development are now left pretty
largely to farmer cooperatives organized by the Cooperative Extension
Service, to breeding associations, to industries servicing animal agricul-
ture, and to farmers themselves. The scientist largely leaves exploita-
tion of research findings to the Cooperative Extension Service and to
industry. As between those two departments, the dollar investment in
mature animals and their generation interval is greater for dairy cattle
than for swine, sheep, and poultry.

The Department of Agricultural Economics, like other such depart-
ments, publishes much but relatively little in peer-edited journals. A
basic reason for this is that agricultural economics as a field of study is
not clearly independent from the study of economics as a whole. It is
far less safely separable from the whole for assertions of principle than
can be the assertion of principles of biology and their chemical and
physical basis from studies on limited samples of plants or animals.
Agricultural economics must deal with an audience that is more con-
cerned with market fluctuations of individual commodities than with

32 — BULLETIN NO. 762

analyses of factors controlling the fluctuation; the audience for the in-
formation largely has its own economic welfare at stake.

The Department of Food Science, created in 1947 from a core of
milk technologists long a part of Dairy Husbandry (from which Dairy
Science also emerged), has been evolving and seeking its place in the
education process. In some respects the department was created as a
response to Congress, which in revising the Hatch Act in 1946 con-
sciously extended federal support for agricultural research beyond farm
production and rural life to concern with marketing and consumer
well-being. Successful research programs in the field range from the
basics of human nutritional need and commodity chemistry to under-
writing development of new food processing techniques. Publication
standards and output should reflect this variation.

The traditional field of home economics, at Illinois known since 1974
as the School of Human Resources and Family Studies, sincerely con-
cerned with teaching undergraduates, has not yet settled into a mature
research and stable publication policy. The need is now widely recog-
nized and changes may be expected. A basic question home economics
faculties will have to resolve is the balance between the exploratory
and the developmental research they ought to pursue. At some schools,
as at Illinois, home economics suffered from being a sort of stepchild
in the College of Agriculture.

Publication output in the Department of Forestry, as in all forestry
work, has been tied to the long generation interval of trees and the
relatively slow response of them to environmental change and experi-
mental treatments. The one major exception has been in wood pro-
cessing.

Plant Pathology, dealing with biological parasitism and its myriad
manifestations, has a constant chorus of happenings to report. Turn-
around time from experimental design to completion and publication is
much shorter in this field than it is in most of forestry research and
in the kindred field of animal disease research. In analysing publication
output, higher weighting must be assigned to those papers that present
the basics of control than for those that flag only the presence of a new
opponent.

For two of the units, Agricultural Entomology and Veterinary Re-
search, our data do not give a complete and fair picture. Agricultural
Entomology is administered in the Illinois Natural History Survey and
Veterinary Research in the College of Veterinary Medicine. While
money from the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station was used in
some part of the work reported in each paper, the Illinois station did
not pay all of the research costs.

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 33

Number of Staff

The number of professorial staff in the College of Agriculture hold-
ing appointments in the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station in-
creased steadily from 1948 through 1970, except for the 1962-64
biennium in which the numbers were the same as for the 1960-62
period. In the 1970-72 biennium period, state funds to the station were
seriously slashed (by about $500,000 annually), and the senior staff
members decreased by the usual attrition. They increased a bit the fol-
lowing biennium but were again down in 1976-78 to the lowest figure
since 1962-64. Simultaneously, the number of students in the College
of Agriculture increased dramatically so that staff changes reflect in
part an added commitment to the classroom.

In general, however, Agricultural Economics, Agronomy, and Ani-
mal Science all experienced major growth in total number of professorial
staff members (assistant professors, associate professors, and full pro-
fessors) involved in research. Lesser but fairly consistent growth oc-
curred in Horticulture, Forestry, Food Science, and Agricultural Engi-
neering. Dairy Science remained essentially unchanged throughout the
period; Plant Pathology, Human Resources and Family Studies (for-
merly Home Economics), Agricultural Entomology, and Veterinary
Research remained essentially static for the 20 years from 1958 to 1978.

The three departments with major staff growth at Illinois were also
the major areas of growth nationally (17). The other research units also
reflected national patterns of overall growth. The similarity in national
and Illinois research subject matters and growth patterns suggests that
the growths could have been the result of national plan, although the
nation did not have a coordinated research planning system for the state
agricultural experiment stations and the USDA until the early 1970's.
The growth also might have resulted from other factors such as more
aggressive leadership in the areas of major growth. It is more likely that
it was a universal response to a felt need by the concerned independent
decision makers.

Financial Support

The dollar figures in Table 7 are the total operation expenses for
each unit for the biennium. They include salary for each scientist for the
proportionate time on a station appointment; wages or salary for tech-
nicians, including post-doctoral appointments, graduate students, and
hourly help; and clerical services. The figures also include expenses for
equipment, livestock, occasional land rental, supplies, publication, and
travel. The figures do not include costs of buildings and their heat,

34 — BULLETIN NO. 762

power, and maintenance, or the original purchase price or rental of land
that scientists use routinely.

The costs of doing agricultural research vary widely with the subject
under investigation, animals being more expensive to maintain and have
available than are trees, other perennials, and annual crops. Of all the
departments or research units only Agricultural Economics, Food Sci-
ence, and the School of Human Resources and Family Studies did not
manage land. All others did in varying degree. Overall the operating
expenses are about 80 percent for salary and wages of personnel.

Allocation of financial resources in an agricultural experiment sta-
tion in principle is strikingly similar to the nutrition of human beings;
before any productive outcome can be demanded at all, the system has to
be kept alive, to be maintained. Only by allocations above that basic level
of maintenance, which is different for the various subject matters and
probably different for various states and regions, can one expect the
resources allocated to research in a field to result in the output of an

Table 7. Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station Support to Departments
and Research Units (in order of greatest to least)

1948-50

1958-60

Agronomy . .
Animal Sci. .

Horf

Agr. Econ. ..
Dairy Sci. . . .
Agr. Eng. ...
Home Econ.b
Food Sci. . . .

Forestry

Vet. Res

Agr. Ent. . . .

$762,491 Agronomy $1,280,453

697,599 Animal Sci 1,272,813

501,982 Dairy Sci 785,050

323,643 Hort 776,553

301,810 Agr. Econ 690,024

200,913 Food Sci 632,739

135,193 Agr. Eng 476,277

112,497 Vet. Res 309,595

87,424 Plant Path 277,791

81,727 Home Econ.b 266,295

38,734 Forestry 203,867

Agr. Ent 73,861

1968-70

1976-78

Agronomy $3,174,407

Animal Sci 2,412,852

Food Sci 1,571,740

Dairy Sci 1,383,812

Agr. Econ 1,308,177

Hort 1,217,423

Plant Path 820,744

Agr. Eng 710,835

Vet. Res 621,554

Forestry 431,350

Home Econ." 361,984

Agr. Ent 158,074

Agronomy $4,606,320

Animal Sci 2,748,991

Agr. Econ 2,332,342

Food Sci 2,265,459

Dairy Sci 1,949,270

Hort 1,885,976

Agr. Eng 1,323,995

Plant Path 1,126,439

Vet. Res 872,147

Forestry 788,240

Hum. Res. & Fam. Stud.b . 710,800

Agr. Ent 475,952

• Plant Pathology combined with Horticulture for 1948-50 biennium.

b The Department of Home Economics became the School of Human Resources and Family
Studies in 1974.

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 35

intended product, in this case, needed, purposeful information. In the
past and through the period covered by this study of research output,
federal funding under the Hatch Act (and the Mclntire-Stennis Act)
could be allocated by the state station director to share a part of the
inevitable maintenance costs. Under the competitive grants program
initiated under the Food and Agriculture Act of 1977, that prerogative is
denied the director and federal dollars may be used within the station
only for the "above maintenance" function of designated scientists. In
this manner at minimum costs and maximum control, the decisions about
agricultural research for the future are more and more centralized in
the Washington bureaucracy.

In general, the larger the research staff the greater the unit's total
financial support. Agronomy and Animal Science gained the most in
total support with increases in both staff and dollars during the 1949-
1978 period. Next came Agricultural Economics, which had major
growth in personnel, and Food Science, which increased both in staff
and equipment.

Number of Publications

The numbers of publications by each department and research unit
for 1948 through 1978 are given in Table 8. The total for the station
was 12,546. In the period 1948 through 1976, the Illinois station pub-
lished a total of 8,396 technical journal articles reported to CSRS, or
76.5 percent of the entire publication output of the station for the 1948-
1976 period; the Illinois total for 1948-1976 was 11,405, of which 61.0
percent appeared in peer-edited journals and 54.2 percent were published
in the 66 journals originally selected as the base of the 1967-1969 analy-
sis. In selecting peer-edited journals, we were most successful with
Agricultural Engineering and least successful with Veterinary Research,
no attempt being made to include journals dealing solely with animal
pathologies and their treatment or control. Of all Agricultural Engineer-
ing peer-edited publications, 82.4 percent were in the 66 peer-edited
journals selected for our study, but for Veterinary Research the figure
was 6.7 percent; Human Resources and Family Studies was the only
other unit publishing less than half — 37.9 percent — in our 66-journal
selection.

Publications per Scientist

In the earlier analyses of CSRS-reported technical articles published
in 1975 by the state stations and in the analysis of the 1967-1969 pub-

36 — BULLETIN NO. 762

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PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 37

llcations in 66 journals, we had for each station corollary data on the
number of scientist years and the number of federal and state dollars
invested in 1967, 1968, 1969, and 1975. The same kinds of analyses were
contemplated for the Illinois output for the entire period 1948-1978.

On investigation, however, it was found that, while the percent of
each scientist's appointment in the Agricultural Experiment Station was
recorded in the archival budget books of the University of Illinois, no
annual summaries of scientist years by departments were available earlier
than for fiscal year 1965, as then stipulated by CSRS for its publication
of annual data from the state stations. By recourse to the earlier annual
budget books, the number of scientist years (full-time equivalent, or
FTE under the University of Illinois system) back through 1948 could
be laboriously dug from the records but that has not been done.

The writer has, however, compared the station records and the bien-
nial report listing of staff head count for the seven bienniums 1964-
1978, to find the relationship of professorial head count and FTE for
the several departments and a school as follows:

FTE is of
head count

(%)

Agricultural Economics 44.0

Agricultural Engineering 52.8

Agronomy 63.4

Animal Science 59.5

Dairy Science 68.3

Food Science 63.4

Forestry 52.5

Horticulture 63.2

Human Resources and Family Studies 31.9

Plant Pathology 74.7

The fractional full-time-equivalent appointments of the senior staff
varied significantly from unit to unit but the relation one to another
remained relatively consistent for the seven bienniums.

The bias involved in comparing publication output of the units on
the basis of head count is obvious. Still head-count data for the first
eight bienniums are all that are readily available. Use of these fractional
coefficients for "correction" of the head count for all 15 bienniums pro-
vided no better precision in interpretation of the findings of the relation-
ship of publication output to total funding from biennium to biennium
than did head count. When calculated, however, on the basis of funding
per scientist within departments for the last seven bienniums a consis-

38 — BULLETIN NO. 762

Table 9. Publications per Senior Staff Year, by Head Count, and by FTE

1948-1978,
by head count

1964-1978

By head count

By FTE

Station-
reported
articles
per staff
year

Peer-
edited
articles
per staff
year

Station-
reported
articles
per staff
year

Peer-
edited
articles
per staff
year

Station-
reported
articles
per staff
year

Peer-
edited
articles
per staff
year

1 Agr. Econ. ..
2 Agr. Eng. ...
3 Agr Ent. . . .

. 1.36
. .99

.42
.59

1.09

1.69
1.18
1.38
.61

.43
1.16
2.58
1.82

1.59
1.52

1.74

3.17
2.82
1.53
1.74

1.03
3.05
4.61
2.86

.56
.92

US

1.88
1.27
1.08
.71

.38
1.64
3.35
2.05

3.52
2.81

2.73

5.19
4.01
2.35
3.37

3.13
5.76
6.06

1.23
1.70

£ii

3.09
1.84
1.98
1.35

1.16
2.56
4.11

4 Agronomy . .

5 Animal Sci. .
6 Dairy Sci. . . .
7 Food Sci. ...
8 Forestry ....

. 1.42

. 2.78
. 2.52
. 1.57
. 1.61

9 Hum. Res. and
Fam. Stud." .
10 Hort

.89
. 2.27

11 Plant Path." .
12 Vet. Res. . . .

. 3.62
. 2.47

•The Department of Home Economics became the School of Human Resources and Family
Studies in 1974.

b Plant Pathology combined with Horticulture for 1948-50 biennium.

tent pattern for most of them emerged. There was, of course, in some
instances a decrease in the statistical significance of differences result-
ing from the decrease in degrees of freedom for the analysis (see Tables
10 and 11). Clearly for the long pull annual records of the FTE research
appointments of the senior scientists of each department and research
unit should be kept by the station office.

The means of departmental and research unit publications per scien-
tist for 1948-1978 based on the head count and for the last seven bien-
niums based on both head count and the fractional FTE are shown in
Table 9. It is the opinion of the writer that the true potential of any
scientist in a field is far short of what might be suggested if the ac-
complishments of a part-time appointment for research are extrapolated
to a full-time appointment. Research on difficult problems is an absorb-
ing and preoccupying task. It is highly doubtful if there is twice as much
time for thought, study, and speculation on a full-time appointment as
occurs among the better scientists on a half-time research appointment.

Publications in Relation to Operating Investment in Research

We also considered the dollar investment for the 30 years in rela-
tion to total reported publications. During the 30 years, the Illinois staff
published 12,546 papers and expended a total of $156,775,483.40 (Table

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 39

9). Thus the average operating investment in every paper published was
$12,4% or $20,696 if only peer-edited journal articles are counted, or
$38,397 if only articles in the 66 selected journals are counted. The data,
however, should not be compared with present-day Illinois data. Because
they are averages over a long period and because of the general infla-
tionary trend for the period, they are far more characteristic of the
early 1960's than of the end of the period.

The inflationary index for institutional costs of research and devel-
opment was 196.56 for fiscal year 1978 as compared with 100 for fiscal
year 1967. The lines of actual and constant- value dollars thus cross at
a point early in the tenth biennium, not in the eighth which is the mid-
point of this time series. A few more than half of the total publications
had been reported by the end of the ninth biennium. For fiscal year 1979
the price index was 216.51, and for fiscal year 1980 it will be no less
than 240. Prospects are that it will go even higher for fiscal year 1981
and later. Thus these cost figures must be doubled or more for estimates
of necessary present investments.

The estimates for publication costs for Veterinary Research and for
Agricultural Entomology were seriously biased to the low side because
not all their costs were in the experiment station. Those two units are
therefore omitted in some of the following comparisons.

The lowest average investment per paper was for the Department of
Plant Pathology at $7,404. The highest was in Food Science at $21,212.
There are logical reasons for such a variation.

Both departments were created at about the same time from parts of
other existing departments. The Illinois Department of Plant Pathology
was one of the official latecomers (1954) to a field long established and
traditionally accepted as an area of investigation and teaching. The de-
partment was largely formed by bringing together small units that had
been a part of other departments, and the plant pathologists were able to
go right on with what they had been doing. Peers are not likely to pre-
judge the significance of finding a new disease anywhere, and the out-
break of an old enemy in a new location under new environmental cir-
cumstances had equal significance. Thus rules of publication behavior
in the field and standards have long been established in plant pathology.
The standards are not any easier to meet than in other areas, but they
are easier to recognize and to teach.

The emerging field of food technology, however, required larger
investments in equipment for processing food, other than that derived
from milk, and in other scientific and technical equipment necessary for
research in human nutrition than Plant Pathology required for its work.
As a newcomer to an expanding field where only a few departments had

40 — BULLETIN NO. 762

been created earlier, the publications of scientists in the new department
of Food Technology (now Food Science) faced higher hurdles for ac-
ceptance in peer-edited journals than became customary as the field
rapidly developed to its present dimensions.

The number of dollars allocated to the departments and research
units for four different bienniums is given in Table 7. Regardless of
the trends evident in that table, station investment per publication
though highest in the 1976-78 biennium increased relatively slowly, and
showed no consistent pattern among departments. The output of sta-
tion-reported publications increased at a rate of 76 publications per bi-
ennium over the 30-year period. There is highly significant statistical
evidence, however, of a declining rate of increase in publication output
over the last decade.

To maintain the 30-year trajectory of increased station publication
output would require the addition of 1.37 staff members and $46,040
to an average department for each additional paper published. But of
course there is no average department; each is unique. Differences are
due to inherent differences among the persons making up the contingent,
to their different backgrounds and motivations, to the uniqueness of
subject matter and the nature and degree of responsibilities they assume
or have been assigned in the practical world, to the expectations and
degree of support of their public clientele apart from students, to the
financial and other facility support provided by their home institutions,
and to the creative, zestful, and mutually supportive atmosphere of their
institutions.

Corollary Changes Within Science as an Enterprise

Many others, too numerous to cite in a publication of this nature,
have been concerned with the recent history of the expansion of science
as a full-blown enterprise of modern man — as an industry of today's
culture for assuring human progress. Most of the resulting papers and
discussion have dealt with physics and the basic understanding of that
field and chemistry. There have been few publications about the applied
fields, especially agriculture.

The most detailed citations and valuable contributions are to be
found in a book by Nicholas Rescher (19) of the University of Pitts-
burgh. Published in 1978, it is a philosophical essay on the economics of
research in natural science. It is a thought-provoking discussion of sci-
ence, its acceleration in its rate of growth and productivity of the recent
past, and the seemingly inevitable deceleration which will result from the
fact that the problems faced are more difficult and expensive of inputs

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 41

to resolve. Dr. Rescher details for basic science the facts of its relatively
recent exponential growth and productivity. He describes how that ex-
plosive growth is being dampened by the increasing complexity of basic
problems, and the difficulty of marshaling the total resources necessary
for their resolution, including the maintenance of the quality of those
inputs, so that scientists are likely approaching an asymptote in the rate
at which discoveries will be made for understanding the complexities of
natural phenomena. He presents views and theories advanced by some
of the great leaders of science about these issues and about whether the
principles to be learned from the scientific method are limited or limit-
less; he believes they are limitless, but presents theory and evidence to
suggest that the deceleration of accomplishments in basic science is at
hand. Even though science will continue to make great contributions to
understanding nature, leading to its control for the benefit of man, such
progress will occur at a slower rate and at increased cost.

Parallels in the applied sciences are revealed in the studies reported
here of research productivity in state agricultural experiment stations.
Total funding for such research grew since the end of World War II
through 1975 at a compound annual interest rate of 10.4 percent, though
the contribution of the federal government was a bit lower, 9.7 percent.
This exponential increase has resulted in a doubling of the actual dollars
appropriated by the individual state and federal governments of appar-
ent funding for agricultural research every seven years. Inflation and
the consequent reduction in the power of each dollar to purchase the
collective resources necessary for agricultural research have reduced
that apparent recent growth in agricultural research to a much more
modest average increment of not quite 5 percent per year, equivalent to
a doubling of constant-value dollars each 15 years or more. Illinois has
not done as well as the nation as a whole.

Still the actual cost of station operation for each paper published
did not increase as fast as one might have expected. Science too has its
own technology, and this suggests that throughout the period of study
the application of that technology and its efficiencies introduced in agri-
cultural research were counterbalancing the increased complexities and
difficulties of the problems studied. For the natural scientists in the
station, the applicable technologies include those enabling them to con-
trol environmental conditions surrounding their material, new instru-
ments with several powers of increase in perception and measurement
of natural phenomena, and new techniques and methods for processing
and interpreting their data. Modern computers and even electronic cal-
culators under this last category were, of course, of infinite value, espe-
cially to the station economists but to most others as well.

42 — BULLETIN NO. 762

The improvements have enabled agricultural scientists to tackle the
complexities of their subject matter in a manner heretofore impossible.
They have been able to redesign and conduct experiments relating to
questions long asked in their fields, to generate data involving deliberate
control and measured interactions, and to analyze their findings to an
understanding which was primarily only highly speculative but a few
years earlier.

Agricultural scientists seek fundamental knowledge of how to bring
the parts of a very complex system together to increase the effectiveness
of provisioning people. This is, of course, the reason for the involve-
ment of specialists from several basic intellectual fields in the basic in-
teractions of the endeavor, those of the physical and biological systems
of nature in the production of useful, healthful commodities with the
energy, distribution, processing, economic, and political systems of the
world.

Statistical Treatments of the Data

As we have accumulated these data over recent years, we have from
time to time subjected them to detailed multivariant statistical analysis.
The presumed independent variables tested as potential influences on
publication output were the department or research unit, bienniums,
staff size as head count and scientist years (FTE), and actual and con-
stant-value dollars (adjusted by the Sonka-Padberg cost-of -doing-re-
search index (26) ) allocated to each department or research unit. The
first analysis for the data accumulated over 13 bienniums indicated that
the rate of publication output at the Illinois station was beginning to slow
down, which suspicion was verified by the analysis of the data accumu-
lated for the 14th and 15th bienniums.

These data have been subjected to many different probings, but they
are in fact limited and not capable of much valid manipulation. It was
early recognized that the information bits are not independent one from
the other. Inflation did not occur randomly among the 15 bienniums but
followed a consistent upward time trend; so too did changes in staff
size, total funding, and publication output. The multicollinearities were
studied by calculation of the Durbin- Watson d statistic and inappropri-
ate regression models so revealed abandoned. This simplification raised
the issue of homogeneity of variances of the data within departments
and bienniums. Tests of heteroskedasticity, or heterogeneity, of vari-
ances revealed significant differences for Agronomy, Horticulture,
Plant Pathology, and Veterinary Research. Corrections of these data

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 43

resulted in no departmental position change or judgments about the basic
inputs necessary for publication output.

The analyses were conducted including and eliminating the two
atypical research units of the station, Agricultural Entomology and
Veterinary Research. When these two units were eliminated from the

Table 10. Rank Order of the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station

Departments and Research Units in Publication Output Tested

by Various Statistical Adjustments and Their Significance* —

for Station-Listed Publications

IS bienniums (1948-1978)

Adjusted for staff head count and

Dept. or
Rank unit

Mean per
biennium

Actual dollars,
dept. or unit

Const, val. dollars,
dept. or unit

1
2
3
4

5
6

7
8

9
10
11
12

Animal Sci

. 137.7 A

Agronomy
Animal Sci.
Agr. Econ.
Hort.

Dairy Sci.
Food Sci.
Agr. Eng.
Vet. Res.

Plant Path.'
Forestry
Hum. Res and
Fam. Stud.
Agr. Ent.

A
AB
AB
AB

AB
AB
B
B

B
B

B
B

Agronomy
Animal Sci.
Agr. Econ.
Hort.

Dairy Sci.
Food Sci.
Agr. Eng.
Vet. Res.

Plant Path.*
Forestry
Hum. Res. and
Fam. Stud.
Agr. Ent.

A
AB
ABC
ABC

BC
BC
BC
BC

BC
BC

BC
C

. . 125.7 AB

Hort

. . 97.8 B

Agr. Econ

. . 89.1 BC

86.4 BC

Plant Patkb

.. 79.8 BC

Vet. Res

.. 72.7 C

Food Sci ,

, . 50.3 D

Agr. Ent.

32.9 E

.. 32.5 E

Aer. Encr. .

.. 31.7 E

Hum. Res. and
Fam. Stud.* ....

.. 15.8 E

7 bienniums (1964-1978)

Adjusted for FTE and

Dept. or
Rank unit

Mean per
biennium

Actual dollars,
dept. or unit

Const, val. dollars,
dept. or unit

1
2
3
4

5
6
7
8

9
10
11

12

. 184.0 A

Agronomy
Agr. Econ.
Animal Sci.
Hort.

Food Sci.
Dairy Sci.
Plant Path.
Agr. Eng.

Forestry
Vet. Res.
Hum. Res. and
Fam. Stud.
Agr. Ent.

A
AB
AB
AB

AB
B
B
B

B
B

B
B

Agronomy
Animal Sci.
Agr. Econ.
Hort.

Food Sci.
Dairy Sci.
Plant Path.
Agr. Eng.

Forestry
Vet. Res.
Hum. Res. and
Fam. Stud.
Agr. Ent.

A
B
B
B

B
B
B
B

B
B

B
B

Animal Sci . . . . .

.. 174.7 A

Hort

. . 144.0 B

Agr. Econ.

.. 122.3 BC

Plant Path.'

. 106.9 CD

Dairy Sci

.. 100.3 CD

Vet. Res

. . 89.4 D

.. 61.6 E

Ajrr. Ene. .

49.4 EF

Agr. Ent

. . 48.7 EF

. . 47.6 EF

Hum. Res. and
Fam. Stud

. . 22.0 F

• Departments or units followed by the same alphabetical characters are not significantly dif-
ferent at the 0.05 level of P.

b 12 bienniums.

e The Department of Home Economics became the School of Human Resources and Family
Studies in 1974.

44 — BULLETIN NO. 762

total station analysis, the colligated results for the station as a whole
were more precise, the standard errors of coefficients were smaller, and
the coefficients of determination (R2) for the regression analysis were
larger. However, those research units were an important part of the
overall station research program, being all of the so-called large animal

Table 11. Rank Order of the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station

Departments and Research Units in Publication Output Tested

by Various Statistical Adjustments and Their Significance* —

for Peer-Edited Publications

15 bienniums (1948-1978)

Adjusted for staff head count and

Rank

Dept. or
unit

Mean per
biennium

Actual dollars,
dept. or unit

Const, val. dollars,
dept. or unit

1
2
3

4

5
6
7
8

9
10
11

12

Agronomy ,

96.5

A
B
C
C

CD
D
D

E

EF
EFG
FG

G

Agronomy
Agr. Econ.
Animal Sci.
Hort.

Dairy Sci.
Food. Sci.
Agr. Eng.
Vet. Res.

Plant Path.
Forestry
Hum. Res. and
Fam. Stud.
Agr. Ent.

A
AB
AB
BC

BC
BC
BC
BC

BC
BC

BC
C

Agronomy
Animal Sci.
Agr. Econ.
Hort.

Dairy Sci.
Food Sci.
Agr. Eng.
Vet. Res.

Plant Path.
Forestry
Hum. Res. and
Fam. Stud.
Agr. Ent

A
AB
ABC
BCD

BCD
BCD
BCD
CD

CD
CD

CD
D

Animal Sci. ....

.. 83.7

Plant Path." ....

.. 57.1

Vet Res

. . 53.6

Hort ,

48.9

Food Sci

, . 44.2

,. 40.6

. . 27.7

24.3

. . 18.9

Forestry

. . 12.3

Hum. Res. and
Fam. Stud."

.. 7.5

7 bienniums

(1964-1978)

Adjusted for FTE and

Rank

Dept. or
unit

Mean per
biennium

Actual dollars,
dept. or unit

Const, val. dollars,
dept or unit

1
2
3
4

5
6
7
8

9
10
11
12

. 142.6

A
B
C
C

CD

DE
EF
EF

EF
FG
GH

H

Agronomy
Agr. Econ.
Hort.
Plant Path.

Dairy Sci.
Agr. Eng.
Food Sci.
Forestry

Animal Sci.
Vet. Res.
Hum. Res. and
Fam. Stud.
Agr. Ent.

A
A
A
A

A
A
A
A

A
A

A
A

Agronomy
Animal Sci.
Agr. Econ.
Hort

Dairy Sci.
Food Sci.
Agr. Eng.
Vet. Res.

Plant Path.
Forestry
Hum. Res. and
Fam. Stud.
Agr. Ent.

A
AB
ABC
BCD

BCD
BCD
BCD
CD

CD
CD

CD
D

Animal Sci .....

. . 104.0

Hort

. . 77.6

Plant Path

. . 75.6

Vet. Res

64.3

,. 51.7

Dairy Sci

.. 450

Agr Econ

. . 42.9

37.1

Ajjr. Ene. .

. . 29.6

Forestry

. 193

Hum. Res. and
Fam. Stud

8.1

• Departments or units followed by the same alphabetical characters are not significantly dif-
ferent at the 0.05 level of P.

b 12 bienniums.

c The Department of Home Economics became the School of Human Resources and Family
Studies in 1974.

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 45

protection area and a substantial segment of the plant protection work;
so reality demanded their inclusion. In actual fact publication output
was highly significantly different among bienniums, research units, dol-
lars allocated, and number of professorial staff. The R* values for the
multivariate regression equations for the station as a whole were about
0.84 when Agricultural Entomology and Veterinary Research data were
included in the computations, and about 0.88 when they were not. Either
analysis provided F values indicating that the probability of chance
causing the overall differences shown was less than 1 in 1,000. Separate
analyses revealed that the data for those two research units were atypi-
cal. For example, throughout the 30-year period a slower rate of increase
in dollar investment by the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station to
Agricultural Entomology led to an apparent increase in publication out-
put. Also, from the data available it appeared that the investment neces-
sary to generate one paper in Agricultural Entomology was several
times higher than in Veterinary Research. Neither of these potential
hypotheses makes sense. The historical data from neither source re-
flect the actual inputs for the publication output.

The results for the two units are what one would expect from a
situation in which the lesser contributor of major sources of financial
support, with its funds widely distributed over most research of an
organization, insisted on approval of and credit for all research in which
any of its dollars were expended. It is clearly the result in this case of
historical accounting and reporting procedures adopted by this station
and this university when times were more gracious and the consequences
of the procedures less potentially damning.

Time Trends in the Efficiency of the Illinois Station's
Publication Output

Research publication output of the Illinois station responded to the
increase in effective funding of equivalent-value constant dollars by an
acceleration in numbers from 1948 through 1956.

At that point the rate of biennial increase in publication output per
constant-value dollar of investment dropped in a decline persisting for
six years. In the next biennium, 1962-64, the relative research output per
dollar unit of investment began an ascent which terminated in its high-
est value in the 30 years during the 1974-76 biennium (see Fig. 4).

The reasons for the marked burst of output after World War II
and then the sudden drop in the efficiency of publication output by the
Illinois station senior scientists beginning with the 1956-58 biennium

46 — BULLETIN NO. 762

are not apparent from the data on funding and staff size, nor is there
other readily available, recorded evidence pertaining to the situation. As
one on the scene at the time, however, it is the opinion of the author
that the increase was due to the enthusiastic return to research by the
senior scientists, the full professors, who, though on the job, had turned
to other tasks and academic responsibilities during the war when the
assistant and instructor ranks had been almost completely eliminated.
That burst of output continued for a time by provision of apprentice
help from aspiring returned veterans until retirements and other attri-
tion concentrated in the mid-1950's reduced the number of senior ex-
perienced and competent professors. A period of time sometimes quite
extended was required for the personnel hired immediately after the
war to complete advanced degrees and to prepare themselves for serious
research while engaged primarily at the time in teaching the large num-
bers of returning veterans seeking a university education. That drop in

Million Publications per
constant million dollars

Number of
publications

alue
lollars

2 —

70
— 60
50

Constant / %
value . •— •' \

A d°iiarsx. ./ :^v \

A y / ^

/ * / .--• NS»

/ \ >• /* Peer- edited
/ *vv f / publications
/ V». S per million dollars

7 / ,-•••"""•%-
^ ,<""" -

«,******•• •••••••* Peer-edited

j? publications

-X

Illinois Station
1 , I , I , 1 , 1 , I , 1 . I

6 —

40
— 30
20

10
0

750

500

250

48-50 52-54 56-58 60-62 64-66 68-70 72-74 76-78
Biennium

Figure 4. Constant-value dollars, peer-edited scientific articles, and publica-
tions per million dollars for the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station
from 1948 to 1978.

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 47

research productivity, persisting for six years, was a belated cost of the
war disruption.

The publication output reached a high asymptote for productivity
for the 1968-1976 period for the combination of staff numbers, dollars
invested, and facilities and "atmosphere" pertaining at the station. It
decreased significantly in 1976-78.

The overall productivity of the Illinois station dropped in the final
biennium of this time series from 1,573 to 1,186 total reported publica-
tions; a decrease of 387 and a decrease of 140 publications in peer-
edited journals from the 1974-76 biennium. It appears that the system
of research productivity was pretty well saturated during the 1970's and
reached an equilibrium consistent with the value of its inputs. In the
analysis of CSRS data for all the state stations, the slope of the annual
overall productivity output line was as steep for the 1966-1975 decade as
in the preceding two, indicating no general decrease up to then in re-
search productivity. However, some of the more prominent and mature
stations, and Illinois was among them, seemed to have reached a slow-
down, as suggested by a decrease in the regression of technical journal
publication numbers on years in the last decade of the 30-year period.
The marked decline in the Illinois publication output was not apparent,
however, until the 1976-78 biennium.

It would be of interest to know whether this abrupt cessation in the
latter half of the 1970's of a long string of annual increases in research
output was a national phenomenon or peculiar to the Illinois station. A
pessimistic hypothesis is that the approach to an asymptote is a general-
ized phenomenon and that the decline in output after reaching a maxi-
mum may be, also. Our data here would suggest that this is inevitable
unless substantial resources are continually added to agricultural re-
search. If we are, however, to approach a level of zero growth in all
science as others predict (see Rescher, 19), then there will be a slowing
of technology inputs to the industry of agriculture and a decrease in the
rate of its productivity growth, which has been twice as great as non-
farm industry of this country ( 10) .

Outlook for the Future Publication Productivity
of Agricultural Scientists

Experienced scientists and research administrators all believe that
there is more to the sum total of research output of a research organiza-
tion than simply the number of scientist years and the financial resources
invested in it. Reason, too, dictates that this is the case.

48 — BULLETIN NO. 762

In examining this assumption, the fiscal history and production rec-
ords of the Illinois station were more useful than the national evidence.
The analysis showed that within that one station with its ten (or twelve)
subject matter departments or units, its greatly varying investment over
the years among those subject matters, and their differences in size and
subject matter traditions, the most precise estimation of publication
output for a subject matter was the multivariate relationship of the size
of the professorial staff devoted to research (FTE) and the number of
dollars invested per FTE in the subject matter field. However, such pre-
cise data were available only for the last seven bienniums of the Illinois
analyses and not at all for other stations. Total dollar inputs are the
product of the two. The relative predictive outcome for the two as inde-
pendent variables and the single variable of their product as independent
was estimated for the limited data of the seven Illinois bienniums
for the ten (or twelve) subjects. Subtle differences found between
the two analyses among departments did not change the departments'
relative ranking to a significant degree; the correlation coefficient
between the coefficients of determination for the two procedures was
0.9063. The single independent variable of total dollars available (as
obtained from the OES and CSRS reports) as a time parallel in rela-
tion to the annual technical journal output of the station was then ex-
amined further.

Dependence of Publication Output on Dollar Investments

During the 30-year period 1945-1975, the annual total available fund-
ing of the state agricultural experiment stations in actual dollars as re-
ported by OES and CSRS accounted for 68.4 percent (r = 0.8273) of
the year-to-year variability in the stations' output of publications in
technical journals. This amounted to an average investment over the
period of $26,431 per recorded publication of this kind. That figure,
because the midpoint year for the publication numbers fell during 1966,
would call for multiplication by 2.25 to 2.5 to equate with 1980 dollars.

For the Illinois station during a comparable time period, 1949-1978,
the average funding available for each of its OES- and CSRS-recorded
publications in technical journals was $18,727 and it, too, would require
multiplication by 2.25 to 2.50 to update to 1980. The year-to-year varia-
tion in the number of actual dollars available to the Illinois station as
reported over the years by the OES and CSRS accounted for 76.3 per-
cent (r = 0.8737) of the year-to-year variance in its number of publi-
cations in technical journals. Relating these latter figures to the actual
annual expenditures as given in the 15 biennial reports of the Illinois

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 49

station for the period, at Illinois the mean cost per publication in techni-
cal journals was $16,620 and the year-to-year variation in dollars ex-
pended accounted for 82.3 percent of the variance in station output of
publications in technical journals.

As organized and administered during this time span, the availability
of dollars clearly had a commanding influence on the productivity of the
Illinois and other agricultural experiment stations. The Illinois station
has been more efficient in the dollar cost of its OES- and CSRS-recorded
technical journal output than have been the stations of the nation as a
whole. Not only has the mean annual cost per publication been lower for
the Illinois station than the average of the other stations, but the
annual rate of cost increase per publication showed no statistically signif-
icant time trend for Illinois and a highly significant one for the nation
as a whole of about $650 per year.

Variations in Level of Investment
in Agricultural Research

Viewed in the broadest sense, differences in dollar investments from
state to state and within states to different problem areas of agricultural
research are a reflection of how the public and its decision-makers view
the importance to them personally of agricultural research. The public at
large relates only superficially to the many different sequential human
tasks in the food and fiber provisioning chain, and those in the majority
in the population centers then relate if at all only to the farm production
of the raw commodities they see in intercity travel and to food on the
retail shelves. The colleges of agriculture early concentrated on agricul-
tural production and only gradually have they expanded their own hori-
zons, the degree to which they have been involved in research throughout
the spectrum of provisioning people being dependent on the population
density of the state.

Federal: Hatch and Mclntire-Stennis

In the allocation of federal dollars to agricultural research, the fed-
eral Hatch and Mclntire-Stennis funds are distributed for use by the
states' stations by law on the basis of urban and rural population dis-
tribution within the states in relation to the national pattern and in
such a fashion as to minimize differences in the federal allocation to the
states. The top ten states in receipt of total federal funds in 1975 were
Texas, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, Ken-
tucky, Virginia, Arkansas, and Louisiana, the amounts varying from

50 — BULLETIN NO. 762

$6,428,023 to $3,522,883. Each of these states has an 1890's land-grant
college in operation. Illinois, with no 1890's college, ranked nineteenth
with an allocation of $2,679,199. This concentration of federal funding
in the southern region bears little relation either to its agriculture or its
agricultural research productivity and is justified on other grounds.

State

In the state funding of agricultural research, the relative allocations
reflect state concerns. The ten leaders in 1975 were California, Florida,
New York, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Minnesota, Mississippi,
Wisconsin, and Ohio, with the levels of all nonfederal funding avail-
able for agricultural research varying from $43,581,205 for the leader
down to $11,571,510 for the state in 10th position and to $1,799,866
for the last state in order. Illinois ranked 18th with $9,597,288.

No predominant and consistent pattern for the state and other non-
federal allocation to agricultural research in the states can be dearly
demonstrated statistically though the effects of total population, levels of
income from agricultural commodities, relative dependence on agricul-
ture as an industry, and concern for consumer welfare can all be seen.
Illinois, often ranking fourth and sometimes third among the states in
income from agriculture, with a heavy population and a great industrial
base, and Iowa, usually ranking third among the states in agricultural
income but not having any great cities or a major industry base, ranked
18th and 16th respectively in the total state and other nonfederal fund-
ing available for agricultural research in 1975. It all apparently makes
political sense but not very good survival logic.

Intrainstitutional Allocation of Funds

Within the land-grant university homes of the state agricultural
experiment stations, resident teaching has carried a higher priority than
research in the allocation of some resources. Throughout the entire
period covered by these studies, this was most apparent in the hiring
of professorial staff, although those with a research appointment were
likely to have more discretionary dollars. Vacancies in subject mat-
ter teaching for the growing numbers of agricultural students were,
rightly, filled first. The subject matter of research interest, but not neces-
sarily the competence, of the new appointee was secondary.

Early in the 1945-1975 period, when the size of both the teaching
and the research endeavor was smaller, specification of subject matters
to be taught and professorial interest in doing so was probably of greater
importance in staff selection than has been the case as the staff size has

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 51

increased. With the increase in size has come specialization and a con-
tinuing shift toward basic science orientation of the professorial staff.
As the teaching load increased in recent years, tending to lower the pro-
portion of the individual appointment to the research function, the num-
ber of individuals employed also increased and the number of basic
disciplines and technical skills they represent expanded. The teaching
load and the greater technical competence of the facilities provided have
been the basic reasons why costs per publication, though increasing at
Illinois some in the 30-year period, have not increased greatly. As num-
bers of college-age students decline during the next decade or so, re-
search interests of new staff will play a greater role in their selection.

Still, with intrainstitutional hiring and promotion standards of the
land-grant universities pretty much determined by interinstitutional
trade and consultation (e.g., the requirement of letters of recommenda-
tion from peer-group leaders employed at sister institutions for pro-
motion to tenured positions) and with the subject matters of research
investment pretty largely determined in their objective thrust by the
national planning and funding agencies and in their technical thrust by-
peer groups, one can believe that the rise in government support of all
science, including agricultural science, since World War II has resulted
in a commonality of institutional response attuned primarily to dollars.
In the opinion of the writer, this trend, in the face of current inflation
and public recognition of limitations to world resources for improve-
ments in living standards and quality of life, is responsible for the
present apathy, if not active resistance, of the public to the continual
requests by scientists for increased funding for their specialty.

Public Examination Necessary

Public examination is necessary of the issues of funding of scientific
research of all kinds and of domination by federal agencies of the direc-
tions of that research.

If, as many students of the problem seem to believe, the health of
American science equates directly with the size of the nation's invest-
ment in it (12), then the present public questioning presages ill days
ahead. Science to be applied in the interest of agriculture is likely to
fare no better than and possibly much worse than that relating to other
public issues. On the scale of national and individual survival, agricul-
ture, even though it produces vital supplies of food and fiber, does not
rank very high alongside public health, space, defense, and energy for
investments in research, since this nation's productive capacity for some
agricultural commodities exceeds our immediate internal demand.

52 — BULLETIN NO. 762

Agricultural Research Necessary to National Welfare

Not yet have we, as a nation, fully recognized the tremendous eco-
nomic and political role played by our national capacity to produce basic
food and fiber in abundance. Not yet have we recognized that the United
States cannot indefinitely maintain the present posture of the cornu-
copia or breadbasket of plenty for those less fortunate elsewhere unless
we invest much more in learning what essential nutrients will ultimately
require constant replenishment and how to do so effectively as they are
withdrawn by soil manipulation, by erosion, and by long-continuing
sale overseas of agricultural commodities from our unappreciated land
resources.

So far in America's history, research resulting in decreases in
necessary labor input to agriculture has accrued to the benefit of farm
owners and operators while agricultural research increasing the amount
of renewable necessary commodities produced has ultimately accrued to
the benefit of the consumer (27). When in the future neither of these
outcomes occurs and the struggle is to maintain production and labor
efficiency at fixed sustainable levels, the societal benefits from agricul-
tural research could be simply basic survival.

It is pessimistic and possibly unnecessarily modest for scientists of
the field to view the health of agricultural science solely in terms of the
level of public investment in it. The public and science in general have
been apathetic about agricultural science (24) and some have viewed
its isolation as self-imposed (14). Efforts to substain its federal funding
have come almost exclusively from within the body of science applied
to agriculture and from the isolated industry itself. As the recent Nobel
Laureate Professor Theodore W. Schultz and his students have so ably
pointed out over the years, agricultural research has paid high returns
as a public investment and high dividends in human survival and is
basic to fulfillment of dreams of equitable world development (24).

Lessons From the Illinois Study

It would seem that in this rather detailed analysis of the scientific
output of one state agricultural experiment station during a very brief
historical time span in which all scientific publication output reached
the highest level in world history, there are lessons to be learned.

1. The funding for the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station in
the 1948-1978 period very nearly achieved (the nation as a whole did
reach that level) the status of an exponential growth curve; the coeffi-
cient of determination for the correlation between the log of the actual

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 53

dollar investments each biennium and the sequential number of the bi-
ennium being R2 = 0.9866. The linear relationship between the actual
dollars invested and the biennium number was nearly as high, however
(R2 = 0.9773), and not significantly different from the log relationship.
There is no real likelihood of future indefinite continuation of this
steep ascent.

The shape of that curve, however, was determined far more, it
seems, by the irresistible trends of the American economy and the hu-
man population numbers since the end of World War II than it was
by a deliberate, planned program for societal investment in science ap-
plied to agriculture. In general, past state and federal appropriations for
agricultural research have pretty well paralleled one another, with the
state appropriations increasing slightly faster. The Illinois station in
relation to the agricultural productivity of the state has been poorly
supported and thus, as pointed out earlier, more dependent for its rela-
tive agricultural science position among the states on federal funding
than on state funding.

Much has been said in federal appropriation hearings during the
past 30 years about support of agricultural science, but as has been well
put by another ". . . there is about much that comes out of the govern-
ment's writing apparatus, an air of unreality, in which words are used
so as to mean as many things to as many people as possible" (11). Little
was said in the Illinois legislature or in public debate about the health of
Illinois's own agricultural science during the 30-year period until 1977
when in the face of an approaching decline in the state's population of
school-age children, the state began planning for new long-term educa-
tional objectives.

2. The Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station already has experi-
enced the inevitable funding decline in purchasing power, which has
been paralleled by a decline in the rate of publication output and for
one biennium at least in an actual decrease in publication numbers. One
cannot be sure that the decrease in station output in 1976-78 from the
high of 1974-76 logically can be attributed to parallelism of funding,
and station output though given great credence in these studies cannot
be depended upon as proof of cause and effect in one biennium. The
slowly withering effect of the decrease in purchasing power of the dol-
lars invested in agricultural research treats agricultural research no
differently than it does all of American science and much of the Ameri-
can population.

3. In the author's opinion it is more than likely that the decrease in
publication output we are witnessing is also the effect of the increasing
basic difficulty in the problems tackled and of the passing of that great

54 — BULLETIN NO. 762

and splendid body of dedicated scientists who elected to join agricultural
academe after service in World War II.

4. In this 30-year period we have witnessed two peaks of research
publication efficiency (peer-edited papers per unit of constant- value
dollars) twenty years apart and not too different in height, which sug-
gests that they may reflect one complete cycle in the human endeavor of
an agricultural experiment station. The twenty-year span is a bit short
for an average human generation interval, but when considered as the
turnover interval for the veterans of World War II whose advanced
degree studies were delayed so that they joined academe five to ten years
later in life than the present newcomers, the parallel may fit.

If that in fact is the case, then we may expect a period of reduction
in the efficiency of the Illinois station followed in time by a recoup of
productivity. The nature and extent of that recoup and the speed of the
recovery are tied to the quality and competence of the new people to be
chosen as faculty replacements, their training, the nature of the prob-
lems they are called on to solve for agriculture, and the adequacy of the
equipment and other facilities provided them for the resolution of those
problems.

Publication Records as Indicative of Benefits
From Research

In the present studies and analyses of several different sources of
information about what agricultural scientists do with facts and infor-
mation they acquire from the publicly funded research they perform for
the public, the author has asked the reader and the paymaster, the pub-
lic, to assume that numbers of publications equate with the ultimate
down-the-road payoff in public benefits of agricultural research.

The author recognizes as he said some years ago, "If printed on
cellulose-based paper these publications can be consumed with relish
and physical benefit only by ruminants, and other organisms possessing
distinctive enzymes for digestion of cellulose," none of which man pos-
sesses. Clearly, it is the theories, the concepts, the ideas, and prescriptions
those papers proclaim which are of importance to the sustaining human
society. Not all research returns a benefit. For that which does, the time
span from discovery and publication to practical benefit is not immedi-
ate and the level of societal benefit varies widely.

This nation has benefited substantially from its investments in re-
search at the state agricultural experiment stations, as has been shown
in many studies, of which that of Evenson et al.t 1979, is the most

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 55

recent (10). So far we have not faced the issue or attempted to quantify
in any way the quality of agricultural research. Because of the mandate
for the research, the quality of its performance must relate in some tan-
gible way to societal benefits. A human activity set in an environment (the
land-grant universities) in which the rewards relate only incidentally
to societal benefits arising from agriculture and more directly to the
approval of colleagues in other fields bent on excellence in the basic
sciences and the performing arts creates career hazards contributing
to the isolation in academe of which agricultural faculties are accused.
No one considering the issue has yet seemed to acknowledge that the
expectations of the clientele (agriculture) and the expectations of the
employer (the university) drum in different cadence even if both are
presumed to be pointed in the same direction, human progress.

Agricultural scientists are faced with the ever-widening public aware-
ness of the margin of hunger constantly tearing at the edges of the ex-
panding world population and on occasion making great inroads by
death from starvation and debilitation. They have been aware of this
all of their careers (8). They have been waging a war against world
starvation without much help ( 18) .

The problem for those who make decisions about public investment
in agricultural research (or any research for that matter) is that the
decision for today's need had to be made yesterday; while that for
tomorrow's emergency has to be made today. The studies reported here
show that one objective way of estimating past performance and poten-
tial benefits from agricultural research is to measure the output of
scientific publications over time. The technique is neither fool-proof nor
time-tested. One cannot now predict with certainty individual and insti-
tutional response if public bodies were to institute such a device as an
early monitor of returns from public investment in research. One sus-
pects there might then be some effort by institutions to inflate evidence
of research output. This would confuse the issue only to a limited
degree, however, especially if all concerned participated in the finagle
to the same relative degree.

In the study of relationships of the immediate past at the Illinois
station, in which no conscious effort could have been made to manipulate
evidence, no real and important changes over time could be observed in
the relationship of station-reported to peer-edited journal publications
among departments. Nor were there discerned any meaningful changes
over time in the relationship of either of these to senior staff members,
to investments of either actual or constant-value dollars, or to them
combined. With the existing intrauniversity pressure for acceptance only
of publications in prestigious peer-edited journals as evidence of schol-

56 — BULLETIN NO. 762

arly and scientific attainment for promotion, it is surprising that such
changes were not seen. To be sure, there were marked and continuing
differences among the departments in the proportion of their total sta-
tion-reported publications that appeared as peer-edited publications.
This relationship was consistent over time and appeared to be more a
reflection of the traditions of the field than of the internal university
policy of conformity.

Public Examination — Invasion of Privacy?

In the late 1960's survey of 104 specialists comparing their opinion
of relative rank order and actual paper count in four peer-edited jour-
nals for the animal agriculture research units in the 48 contiguous-state
stations, comments unsolicited and unidentifiable as to source were
received by the author indicating that some scientists believed any
examination of research competence was uncalled for and unnecessary;
some implied it was an invasion of the area of academic freedom. More
recently equally vigorous opposition has been expressed. At the time
of initiation of the first objective survey of research competence in the
early 1960's, the writer was greatly influenced by those views and as a
result did not publish his findings. He initiated the studies as a private
endeavor solely to answer objectively questions put by the highest circles
of U.S. executive government and to which he was ashamed to answer
as a matter of personal opinion. The death of President J. F. Kennedy
brought to a close the detailed examination of agricultural research by
the President's Science Advisory Committee, which had it been com-
pleted and a comprehensive report published then would have, if it de-
veloped as projected, contributed much to public understanding of the
organizational structure, the competence, and the purpose of this na-
tion's agricultural research establishment.

In the meantime comments have appeared in the science literature
pro and con (6, 16, 28) about the basic competence of agricultural
researchers and sometimes about the basic integrity of the organiza-
tional structure of which they are a part. Presumably as a result of
these reactions, Congress stipulated in the appropriations enactments
of the Food and Agriculture Act of 1977 even closer future surveillance
by federal agencies of agricultural research, and centralized even further
the decision-making process about the subjects of agricultural research
and the scientific technology to be employed in their resolution. None
of that influence is yet injected into the published record.

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 57

The Problem for the Public

The problem before us now is whether the directions taken for us
by our federal Congress and our federal action agencies are the proper
ones for optimum future service of agricultural research to the Ameri-
can public. The penalty of failure will be great and undeniably subject
to wider recognition than will be the rewards of success. Unfortunately,
government does not enjoy detached, disinterested examination of its
own actions and has not authorized and is not likely to authorize lively
research into the most effective and proper way for the public in its own
interests to support agricultural research.

This examination of the output of technical journal articles and
peer-edited scientific papers by the state agricultural experiment sta-
tions system of the United States, with special emphasis on one station,
Illinois, for items of detail the national data do not provide, has sum-
marized the situation for a unique period in U.S. history. Since World
War II science and its application to public concerns have expanded
at heretofore unprecedented rates. There are now signs of an imminent
decrease in those rates, which in the face of the world's projected popu-
lation expansion raises important questions of national policy for agri-
cultural research. The data presented here close out a period of federal
funding and reporting policy. The stage is set for future comparative
studies of the effectiveness of new policies initiated at the end of the
period covered in which the public and federal and state governments
have a great stake.

58 — BULLETIN NO. 762

References Cited

1. Anonymous. Annual report on the state agricultural experiment

stations. Office of Experiment Stations, U.S. Department of Agri-
culture. 1901-1959.

2. Anonymous. Funds for research at state agricultural experiment

stations and other cooperating institutions. Cooperative State
Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1960-1975. (Last
report appeared in January, 1976, as CSRS 15-11.)

3. Arndt, T. M., D. G. Dalyrymple, and V. W. Ruttan, editors. Resource

allocation and productivity in national and international agricul-
tural research. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. 617p.
1977.

4. Bredahl, M., and W. Peterson. The productivity and allocation of

research: U.S. agricultural experiment stations. American Journal
of Agricultural Economics 58:684-692. 1976.

5. Carlson, C. W., D. J. Bray, and G. J. Mountney. Scientist/year and

publication expenditures for U.S. poultry research in 1974 and
1975. Poultry Science 56:1960-1967. 1977.

6. Committee on Research Advisory to the U.S. Department of Agri-

culture. Report. Division of Biology and Agriculture, National
Research Council/National Academy of Sciences. National Tech-
nical Information Service, Springfield, Va. 464p. 1972. (Often called
the Pound Report after the chairman of the committee, Glenn S.
Pound.)

7. Darlington, C. D. The dead hand on discovery. Discovery 9:358-362

and 10:7-11. 1949-50.

8. De Kruif, Paul. Hunger fighters. Harcourt, Brace, New York. 377p.

1928.

9. Evenson, R. E., and Y. Kislev. Agricultural research and productivity.

Yale University Press, New Haven and London. 204p. 1975.

10. Evenson, R. E., P. E. Waggoner, and V. W. Ruttan. Economic bene-

fits from research: an example from agriculture. Science 205:1101-
1107. 1979.

11. Greenbaum, Leonard. A special interest. The Atomic Energy Com-

mission, Argonne National Laboratory, and the Midwestern Uni-
versities. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. 222p. 1971.

12. Kevles, D. J. The health of science: Has American science lost its

vigor? Harper's, August: 26, 28-30. 1979.

13. Knoblauch, H. C., E. M. Law, and W. P. Meyer. State agricultural

experiment stations: a history of research policy and procedures.
U.S. Department of Agriculture Miscellaneous Publication 904.
262p. 1962.

14. Mayer, A., and J. Mayer. Agriculture, the island empire. Daedalus

(Journal of American Academy of Arts and Sciences) Summer:
83-95. 1974.

15. Milton, H. S. Cost-of-research index, 1920-1970. Operations Research

20:1-18. 1972.

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 59

16. Nuckton, C. F. The investment in agricultural research: a success

story. Division of Agricultural Sciences, University of California.
California Agriculture, September: 7-9. 1979.

17. Peterson, W. L. The allocation of research, teaching and extension

personnel in U.S. colleges of agriculture. American Journal of
Agricultural Economics 51:41-56. 1969.

18. Read, Hadley. Partners with India: building agricultural universities.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Agricul-
ture. 159p. 1974.

19. Rescher, N. Scientific progress: a philosophical essay on the econom-

ics of research in natural science. University of Pittsburgh Press.
278p. 1978.

20. Salisbury, G. W. Reference journals used by dairy scientists. Journal

of Dairy Science 35:566-569. 1952.

21. Salisbury, G. W. Contributions of reproductive physiologists, geneti-

cists, nutritionists, health scientists and extension specialists in
improving dairy cattle productivity. Pages 117-127 in A Symposium
on Animal Agriculture. Edited by J. R. Lodge. University of Illi-
nois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Agriculture, Agricultural
Experiment Station Special Publication 57. 1979.

22. Salisbury, G. W., K. E. Harshbarger, J. R. Lodge, L. R. Fryman,

and R. E. Marcoot. Returns from public investment in research
on milk production. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Department of Agricultural Economics Dairy Marketing Facts
AE-4314. 3p. 1973.

23. Salisbury, G. W., and R. G. Hart. The evolution and future of Amer-

ican animal agriculture. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 22:
394-409. 1979.

24. Schultz, T. W. The allocation of resources to research. Pages 90-

120 in Resource Allocation in Agricultural Research. Edited by
W. L. Fishel. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. 1971.

25. Scully, M. G. The well-known universities lead in rating of faculties'

reputation. Chronicle of Higher Education, January 15, 1979. (Re-
port of a 1977 survey by E. C. Ladd, Jr., and S. M. Lipset, Social
Science Data Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs.)

26. Sonka, S. T., and D. I. Padberg. Estimation of an academic research

and development price index. University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, Department of Agricultural Economics, No. 79 E-
100. 1979.

27. Swanson, E. R. The role of technology in Illinois crop production.

Pages 51-66 in Papers by the Recipients of Awards in 1977, Paul
A. Funk Recognition Program. University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, College of Agriculture Special Publication 48. 1977.

28. Wade, N. Agriculture: NAS panel charges inept management, poor

research. Science 179:47. 1973.

29. Williams, S. W., S. Strong, and C. B. Baker. Benefits stem from re-

search on corn production. Illinois Research 15(3) :3-4. 1973.

60 — BULLETIN NO. 762

Appendix: Raw Data for Study lie

The following table summarizes the raw data obtained for the study
of full-length peer-edited articles published in 66 selected journals for
the calendar years 1967, 1968, and 1969. The subject matters relate
basically to departments or units in the Illinois Agricultural Experiment
Station except that animal sciences combines the output of two Illinois
departments and the animal production publications of the Veterinary
Research unit of the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medi-
cine. No journals dealing with animal pathologies and their control were
included in the journals selected for review. Subject matters not in-
cluded in the responsibilities of the Illinois departments or units are
listed under "other."

The journals reviewed (shown after the table) were developed from
a list provided in 1970 by heads of departments and prominent scien-
tists at the Illinois station. Estimates from fiscal year data indicated
that approximately 37 percent of the national total of technical journal
articles published by the state agricultural experiment stations for the
period appeared in these journals. For Illinois the estimate was 36.5
percent.

Articles with multiple authors were credited proportionately to
their employers without regard to author order; this procedure accounts
for the fractional numbers in the table. Blanks appear in the table where
either no publications were recorded for that subject matter or the sub-
ject matter was not clearly identified for the station, in which case the
publication or proportionate share thereof was credited to "other." For
normalizing the distribution of these observations and for statistical
analysis, 0.5 was added to each observation and the square root trans-
formation of that figure used.

The data are recorded here by states and by subject matters before
that transformation was made. As described in the text, they represent
an adequate sample for delineation of subject matter scientific publica-
tion output by the Illinois station. Whether they do so for any other
state's output for a designated subject matter we were unable to test.

A rank array of the states based on the total number of publications
credited to the agricultural experiment stations of the 50 states results in
an order varying slightly from a rank order based on least square means
of annual publications per subject matter unit given for the first 10 sta-
tions in Table 6. Based on the raw data totals for each station for the
three years, the rank order for the top ten stations is California, Wis-
consin, New York, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, North Carolina, Iowa,
Minnesota, and Oregon.

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Peer-Edited Journals Used in Study He

Agricultural Engineering

Agronomy Journal

American Economic Review

American Journal of Agricultural Economics (formerly Journal of Farm
Economics)

American Journal of Sociology

American Society for Horticultural Science Journal (formerly American
Society for Horticultural Science Proceedings)

American Society of Agricultural Engineers — Transactions

American Society of Civil Engineers — Geotechnical Engineering Divi-
sion Proceedings

American Society of Civil Engineers — Hydraulics Division Proceedings

American Society of Civil Engineers — Irrigation and Drainage Divi-
sion Proceedings

American Sociological Review

American Wood Preservers' Association Proceedings

Applied Microbiology

Canadian Entomologist

Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics

Cereal Chemistry

Crop Science

Econometrica

Entomological Review (English translation, from U.S.S.R.)

Federation Proceedings, Federation of American Societies for Experi-
mental Biology

Forest Products Journal

Forest Science

Genetics

Horticultural Research

HortScience

Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

Journal of Agricultural Engineering Research

Journal of American Dietetic Association

Journal of Animal Science

Journal of Bacteriology

Journal of Consumer Affairs

Journal of Dairy Science

Journal of Economic Entomology

Journal of Food Science

Journal of Food Technology

Journal of Forestry

Journal of General Microbiology

Journal of Heredity

Journal of Home Economics

Journal of Hydrology

Journal of Insect Physiology

Journal of Invertebrate Pathology

PRODUCTIVITY OF STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS — 63

Journal of Milk and Food Technology

Journal of Nutrition

Journal of Reproduction and Fertility

Journal of Soil and Water Conservation

Land Economics

Lipids

Mycologia

Nematologica

Phytochemistry

Phytopathology

Plant and Soil

Plant Disease Reporter

Plant Physiology

Poultry Science

Regional Science Association

Rural Sociology

Silvae Genetica

Sociological Quarterly

Soil Science

Soil Science Society of America Journal

Textile Research Journal

Virology

Weed Science

Wood Science and Technology

3M— 7-80— 47931— aj

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA

Q 630.7IL6B C008

BULLETIN URBANA
762 1980

30112019531141