Getting out of the closet: Scientific authorship of literary fiction and knowledge transfer

Some scientists write literary fiction books in their spare time. If these books contain scientific knowledge, literary fiction becomes a mechanism of knowledge transfer. When this is the case, in the framework of the distinction of formal versus informal knowledge transfer, we conceptualize literary fiction as non-formal knowledge transfer. We model knowledge transfer as a function of the type of scientist (academic or non-academic) and the field of science. Academic scientists are those employed in academia and public research centers whereas non-academic scientists are those employed in other sectors with a scientific background. We also distinguish between direct knowledge transfer (the book includes the scientist's research topics), indirect knowledge transfer (scientific authors talk about their research with cultural agents) and reverse knowledge transfer (cultural agents give scientists ideas for future research).