Francis Narin

The increasing linkage between U.S. technology and public science

Abstract A detailed and systematic examination of the contribution of public science to industrial technology would be useful evidence in arguing the case for governmental support of science. This paper provides such an examination, by tracing the rapidly growing citation linkage between U.S. patents and scientific research papers. Seventy-three percent of the papers cited by U.S. industry patents are public science, authored at academic, governmental, and other public institutions; only 27% are authored by industrial scientists. A strong national component of this citation linkage was found, with each countrys inventors preferentially citing papers authored in their own country, by a factor of between two and four. Particularly rapid growth was found for the dependence of patented technology on U.S. papers. References from U.S. patents to U.S.-authored research papers have tripled over a six-year period, from 17,000 during 1987–1988 to 50,000 during 1993–1994, a period in which the U.S. patent system grew by only 30%. The cited U.S. papers are from the mainstream of modern science; quite basic, in influential journals, authored at top-flight research universities and laboratories, relatively recent, and heavily supported by NIH, NSF, and other public agencies.

Direct validation of citation counts as indicators of industrially important patents

Abstract A new and direct validation study of the use of patent citation analysis in corporate technological assessment is reported, in which a strong association was found between citation counts for highly cited U.S. patents and knowledgeable peer opinion as to the technical importance of the patents. A set of 20 researchers and research managers at Eastman Kodak, all of whom are working in the area of silver halide technology, were asked to each rate the technical impact and importance of each patent in overlapping sets of Eastman Kodak silver halide patents. A total of 77 patents had been selected for rating from 129 silver halide technology patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to Eastman Kodak in 1982 and 1983. The patents ranged from those receiving zero citations, to highly cited patents, cited 10 or more times on the front pages of subsequent U.S. patents issued through 1988. Amongst the infrequently cited patents there were no statistically significant differences between the peer and citation ratings, although there was a rather steady, small progression of both ratings. However, in contrast to the small differences at the low citation end, the group of highly cited patents were rated far more highly by the evaluators, with a difference in ratings that was statistically significant. This directly shows that highly cited patents are of greater technical importance than less frequently cited patents, in the opinion of knowledgeable peer researchersand inventors, and thereby supports the growing use of patent citation indicators in assessing the technological importance of a companys patent portfolio.

Patents as indicators of corporate technological strength

Abstract Quantitative indicators of the technological strengths of individual companies would be an important addition to the financial and economic data used in competitor assessments, merger/acquisition analyses, investment decisions, and corporate planning and management. This paper examines the links between corporate patent and patent citation data, and several other indicators of corporate performance: changes in sales and profits, research and development budgets, scientific productivity, and expert opinions of company technological strength. The study covers 17 US pharmaceutical companies for which financial, R&D and expert opinion data were readily available. For these pharmaceutical companies it was found that the patent data are an excellent indicator of overall corporate technological strength with (1) an overall correlation of 0.82 between expert opinion of pharmaceutical company technical strength, and the number of US patents granted to the companies, and (2) correlations, in the general range of 0.6 to 0.9, between increases in company profits and sales, and both patent citation frequency and concentration of company patents within a few patent classes.

An analysis of the critical role of public science in innovation: the case of biotechnology

Examines the link between public science and thebiotechnology industry in the United States. As knowledge plays an increasingrole in our innovation-based economy, firms at the forefront of industry mustexploit their absorptive capacity, defined as the ability to recognize newinformation, assimilate it, and apply it commercially. The most importantsource of external knowledge centers on public science, which is scientificresearch performed in and supported by governmental, academic and charitableresearch institutions. Previous studies have found that biotechnology, as a relevantly recent industrycomposed of mainly small, innovative firms, plays an important role intransferring knowledge from the university to the marketplace. In an effort toexamine this link more closely, this study focuses on scientific citations,funding sources and countries of origin, and a comparative analysis ofdedicated biotechnology firms and large pharmaceutical companies in theirlinkages to public science. Using the IPO prospectuses of U.S. biotechnologycompanies that were public traded as of 1993, 119 firms were identified. AllU.S. patents they acquired from the date they went public through 1997 wereidentified. Analysis of this patent data shows that the biotechnology industry relies moreheavily on publicly funded science than do other industries, including largepharmaceutical companies, though mostly for basic as opposed to appliedresearch purposes. The National Cancer Institute and National Institute ofGeneral Medical Sciences were identified as the two largest funding sources.Examination of the scientific papers listed in these industry-held patentsfound that the majority of citations emanate from U.S.-based authors at publicresearch institutions. Concludes that as biotechnology continues to develop andrevolutionize many fields of industry, continued public support of basicresearch will give the U.S. a strategic advantage economically. (CJC)

Scientific co-operation in Europe and the citation of multinationally authored papers

Under the sponsorship of the U.S. National Science Foundation, CHI Research, Inc. developed the bibliometric indicators for the U.S. National Science BoardsScience Indicators Reports starting withScience Indicators 1972. In the work reported here, for the Commission of the European Communities, CHI has extended the Science Indicators techniques and database to a study of publication, coauthorship and citation within 28 scientific fields related to various European Community programs.Perhaps the most important finding of the research was that internationally coauthored papers — papers authored by scientists affiliated with institutions in more than one EC country — were cited two times as highly as papers authored by scientists working at a single institution within a single country. These EC-EC internationally coauthored papers were cited as highly as EC-Non EC and Non-EC papers. This indicates that the internationally linked European science is of as high impact as any other science in the world.A second key finding was that, after compensating for national scientific size, the degree of international coauthorship did not appear to be particularly dependent upon size. However, linguistic and cultural factors were found to be very strong. The patterns of coauthorship amongst the European countries are far from homogeneous, and are quite heavily affected by linguistic, historical, and cultural factors.Finally, it was found that international coauthorship is increasing steadily, both within and outside of the Community, with some evidence that international cooperation is increasing more rapidly in scientific fields that have been targeted by the Commission.

Citation rates to technologically important patents

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the average number of citations received by issued U.S. patents from subsequently issued U.S. patents is higher for patents associated with important technological advances than for a group of randomly selected patents. Analysis of examiners citations to 100 selected patents showed that these selected patents, which underlay technically important products, were more than twice as frequently cited (significance level of 0.0001) as a randomly selected set of 102 control patents. This finding provides strong evidence for the hypothesis that patent citation data can be used in technological indicators development, and in technological policy analysis, since it implies that the location and analysis of groups of highly cited patents can provide a valid indicator of patent areas of technical importance.

Is technology becoming science

Citation and referencing data from recent biotechnology patents and bioscience papers is used to show that the bibliometric properties in these two realms are quite similar. Specifically, it is shown that the time distribution of references from both patents and papers are similar, with peak citing at two to four years prior to publication or issue. This is shown to hold for patents citing patents, for papers citing papers, and for patents citing papers. Furthermore, it is shown that there is a very skewed distribution of cited material in both patents and papers, with a relatively small number of highly cited patents and papers, and a relatively large number of documents which are cited only once or twice, or not at all. Finally, it is shown that there is a substantial amount of citation from biotechnology patents to the central scientific literature. We conclude from this that science and technology are far more closely linked today than is normally perceived, and that, in fact, the division between leading edge biotechnology and modern bioscience has alsmot completely disappeared.

Structure of the Biomedical Literature

The structure and interrelations of the biomedical journal literature are investigated as a preparatory step for studies of biomedical research activity. Using newly developed methods of bibliographic citation analysis, approximately 900 biomedical journals are classified into approximately 50 separate fields and into four research levels. The research‐level scale indicates research orientation ranging from clinical observation to basic research. Measures of influence are then obtained for individual journals, for biomedical fields and for research levels. The fields of biochemistry and physiology are shown to have the highest citation influence. A hierarchical influence diagram is presented to display the influence of 42 fields within biomedicine. Hierarchical influence diagrams are also presented for several individual fields showing the influence structure and citation relationships among their component journals. The combination of a subject, a level and an influence measure provides a unified framework for planned research activity analysis.

Status report: Linkage between technology and science

Abstract A status report is presented on indicators of the linkage between technology, as characterized by granted U.S. patents, and science as characterized by the “Other references” cited on the front page of those patents. It is shown that these other references have increased threefold in recent years from fewer than one-third per patent in 1975 to more than one per patent in 1989. These science linkages occur most heavily in pharmaceutical, chemical and electronics patents; the cited science is youngest in electronics and pharmaceuticals with a median age of three to four years, similar to the age of research papers cited in other research papers. The cited science varies significantly for patents in the different major countries, at least partially reflecting the national differences in technological emphasis, including the strong electronic emphasis for Japanese patenting, and the U.S. and U.K. strengths in pharmaceuticals.

Bibliometric performance measures

Three different types of bibliometrics — literature bibliometrics, patent bibliometrics, and linkage bibliometric can all be used to address various government performance and results questions. Applications of these three bibliometric types will be described within the framework of Weinbergs internal and external criteria, whether the work being done is good science, efficiently and effectively done, and whether it is important science from a technological viewpoint. Within all bibliometrics the fundamental assumption is that the frequency with which a set of papers or patents is cited is a measure of the impact or influence of the set of papers. The literature bibliometric indicators are counts of publications and citations received in the scientific literature and various derived indicators including such phenomena as cross-sectoral citation, coauthorship and concentration within influential journals. One basic observation of literature bibliometrics, which carries over to patent bibliometrics, is that of highly skewed distributions — with a relatively small number of high-impact patents and papers, and large numbers of patents and papers of minimal impact. The key measure is whether an agency is producing or supporting highly cited papers and patents. The final set of data are in the area of linkage bibliometrics, looking at citations from patents to scientific papers. These are particularly relevant to the external criteria, in that it is quite obvious that institutions and supporting agencies whose papers are highly cited in patents are making measurable contributions to a nations technological progress.