title: On scaling of scientific knowledge production in U.S. metropolitan areas.
abstract: Using data on all scientific publications from the Scopus database, we find a superlinear scaling effect for U.S. metropolitan areas as indicated by the increase of per capita publication output with city size. We also find that the variance of residuals is much higher for mid-sized cities (100,000 to 500,000 inhabitants) compared to larger cities. The latter result is indicative of the critical mass required to establish a scientific center in a particular discipline. Finally, we observe that the largest cities publish much less than the scaling law would predict, indicating that the largest cities are relatively unattractive locations for scientific research.
authors.affiliation: School of Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Önder
authors.initials: Ö
authors.lastname: Nomaler
authors.affiliation: Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Koen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Frenken
authors.affiliation: Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Gaston
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Heimeriks
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D011156:Population Density; D012106:Research; D014481:United States; D014505:Urban Population