So the domain I’m most familiar with is early stage drug discovery In industry. This requires multidisciplinary teams of chemists, computational chemists, biochemists, biologists, crystallographers etc. Chemists tend to be associated with one project at a time and I don’t perceive part-time working to be beneficial there. However the other disciplines are often associated with multiple projects. So there’s a natural way to halve (say) the workload without reducing efficiency. The part-time scientist should be highly experienced, committed to what they are doing, and have few management responsibilities. If that holds then my experience is they are at least as productive than a full time worker, hour for hour.
So the domain I’m most familiar with is early stage drug discovery In industry. This requires multidisciplinary teams of chemists, computational chemists, biochemists, biologists, crystallographers etc. Chemists tend to be associated with one project at a time and I don’t perceive part-time working to be beneficial there. However the other disciplines are often associated with multiple projects. So there’s a natural way to halve (say) the workload without reducing efficiency. The part-time scientist should be highly experienced, committed to what they are doing, and have few management responsibilities. If that holds then my experience is they are at least as productive than a full time worker, hour for hour.