Does ( and how ) the entrepreneurial orientation of scientists affect publication performance ?

In order to identify the effect of academic entrepreneurial orientation on scientific activity, this work compares the publication performance of entrepreneurial scientists (Edison and Pasteur-scientists) with that of traditional scientists (Bohr and Other-scientists). The majority of contributions found in the literature have generally conveyed that entrepreneurial academics show a better and larger record of publications. Quality is measured basically by means of citations per paper and quantity by number of papers. We contribute to this stream of research by investigating more deeply the differences between more or less entrepreneurial-oriented scientists. In order to do so we take into account the differences in scientists’ publication portfolio, in terms of scientific productivity, prestige and research breadth or multidisciplinarity. Our results shows, entrepreneurially oriented scientists publish more frequently than traditional scientist, while traditional scientists are more favorable to obtain research prestige (forward citation). Pasteur scientists effect to gain research prestige is higher than other scientists in highly cited articles. By comparing diversity of research portfolio, Pasteur scientists have significantly larger diversity than Bohr scientists. These results show sensitivity and fallibility of research evaluation using bibliographic information. In order to precisely evaluate accomplishments of entrepreneurial scientists, evaluation of their multidisciplinary portfolio is required.