THE ROLE OF REPUTATION IN THE RECRUITMENT OF SCIENTISTS

Drawing on the sociology of science literature, we argue that a 'reput ation' for openness with scientific information may be an important as set for a company to possess with regard to its recruiting efforts. To test this argument, we conducted a survey of over 400 Ph.D. students to determine if a company's support for publication matters in their j ob search, and what their opinions were regarding a list of twelve US pharmaceutical companies. Our results were that publication support do es matter, but not as much as quality of research staff, working condi tions, and salary, However, a ranking by our respondents of their top three prospective employers mirrored a ranking of those companies' pub lication records suggesting that publication may indeed be a signaling device, thus providing a higher degree of visibility, that prospectiv e employees consider.