Do academic inventors have diverse interests?

Abstract

Academic inventors bridge science and technology, and have attracted increasing attention. However, little is known about whether they have more diverse research interests than researchers with a single role, and whether their important position for science–technology interactions correlates with their diverse interests. For this purpose, we describe a rule-based approach for matching and identifying academic inventors, and an author interest discovery model with credit allocation schemes is utilized to measure the diversity of each researcher’s interests. Finally, extensive empirical results on the DrugBank dataset provide several valuable insights. Contrary to our intuitive expectation, the research interests of academic inventors are the least diverse, while those of authors are the most. In addition, the important position of the researchers has a certain relation with the diversity of research interests. More specifically, the degree of centrality has a significant positive correlation with the diversity of interests, and the constraint presents a significant negative correlation. A significant weaker negative correlation can also be observed between the diversity of research interests of academic inventors and their closeness centrality. The normalized betweenness centrality seems be independent from interest diversity. These conclusions help understand the mechanisms of the important position of academic inventors for science–technology interactions, from the perspective of research interests.

When and how scientists influence technological performance: A moderated mediation model

“…The conclusions of this study offer several theoretical implications. Previous studies explored the direct relationship between science and technological innovation from the perspectives of scientists and scientific knowledge [ 2 , 7 , 8 , 17 ]. This study proposes several new insights into the relationships between scientists and two dimensions of technological performance at the team level.…”

“…Conversely, pure inventors exclusively contribute to technological innovation and patent applications. Scientists within an invention team bridge science and technology [ 17 , 22 ], reflecting the team’s ability to absorb and transform scientific knowledge, thereby influencing the quantity and quality of technological inventions.…”

“…According to previous research, micro-foundations such as agency behavior, opportunity, and habits drive the changing structure of collaboration networks [ 16 ]. Scientists publish scientific papers and file patents in an invention team, while pure inventors only apply for patents [ 17 ]. The distinction in research paradigms, work habits, and knowledge base potentially influences the persistence of team collaboration [ 18 ], a critical factor influencing the success of an invention team.…”

A network coupling approach to detecting hierarchical linkages between science and technology

“…(ii) Identifying linkages using author–inventor relations. The potential author–inventor relations in papers and patents are used as a “bridge” to describe S&T interactions (Balland & Boschma, 2022; Xu et al, 2023). However, the number of author–inventors is small and relies heavily on name disambiguation, and the semantic content for S&T cannot be verified.…”

Disclosure of patenting activities within scientific publications as potential conflicts-of-interest: Evidences from biomedical literature

“…The parallel publishing and patenting activities are often studied in the form of "patentpaper" pairs [45], showing not only the potential dilemma and complexity when pursuing such activities in parallel [46,47] or in grant selection and peer-review processes [48,49].…”