Does involvement in patenting jeopardize one’s academic footprint? An analysis of patent-paper pairs in biotechnology

• Published in: Research policy 2015-11, Vol.44 (9), p.1702-1713
• Main Authors: Magerman, Tom, Looy, Bart Van, Debackere, Koenraad
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Algorithms; Biotechnology; Citation analysis; Data mining; Entrepreneurial universities; H-index; Patent-paper pairs; Patent-publication pairs; Science–technology interactions; Studies
• ISSN: 0048-7333; 1873-7625
• DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2015.06.005

•Finds no negative effect on forward citations for publications that are subject of a patent.•Finds no decline in the scientific forward citations rate after patent grant for such publications.•Finds a far higher lifespan H-index for authors involved in patenting activities. The question whether involvement in patenting hampers the dissemination of a scientist’s published research is a relevant and important one. To this end, a detailed, large-scale citation analysis of patent-paper pairs in biotechnology is conducted. Those pairs signal the occurrence of research resulting simultaneously in scientific publications and patent applications. Patent-paper pairs are detected using text-mining algorithms applied on a large dataset. Starting from a dataset consisting of 948,432 scientific publications and 88,248 EPO and USPTO patent documents, 584 patent-paper pairs are identified. The forward citation patterns of these patent-paper pairs are then matched and compared to biotechnology publications without an equivalent patent. Publications linked to a patent receive more citations than publications without a patent link (after taking into account the necessary controls). In addition, by comparing H-indexes, our findings reveal that the authors involved in such pairs develop a larger scientific footprint than comparable colleagues refraining from patent activity. We conclude that involvement in patenting does not hamper the dissemination of published research in the field of biotechnology.