Is the prominent scientist the one who becomes an inventor? A matching of Swedish academic pairs in nanoscience to examine the effect of publishing on patenting

Abstract

Nanoscience is an innovation intensive interdisciplinary field, where science and technology are closely related during development. Sweden represents an interesting setting to examine how they are related, because a high fraction of the total Swedish academic patents can be classified as Nanoscience. Combining bibliometric data from Web of Science, patent data from EPO and data from Swedish universities, this paper identifies all authors and all inventors listed on patents who work at universities, within nanotechnology in Sweden. The main question we address is if prominent academic scientists in terms of scientific publications are also the ones who become academic inventors. Publications are examined in terms of published articles and invention in terms of patents. The paper uses a novel semi-parametric technique, namely a conditional regression in a matched sample, in order to isolate the effect of publishing on patenting. The novelty of this paper is that it applies a conditional logistic regression in matches of academic pairs in order to isolate the relationship between patentingpublishing in nanoscience. The empirical results show that academics who both publish and patent have on average more publications as well as more citations. Furthermore, having a higher number of citations can increase the probability of having a patent. Thus, by isolating the effects of publishing on patenting, this paper contributes by demonstrating that scientific prominence, indicated both by number of articles and citations, positively impact the propensity to take patents.

Spatial Interactions and the Commercialisation of Academic Patents: The Chinese Experience

“…Scholars with a higher number of publications are more likely to apply for academic patents (Fabrizio & Minin, 2008). This positive relationship between publication and academic patenting is also supported by other empirical studies (Bourelos et al, 2017; Grimm & Jaenicke, 2015; Lee, 2019). In addition, a few studies have argued that there is no significant relationship between publication and patents, or there is a curvilinear or negative relationship (Blumenthal & David, 1997; Crespi et al, 2011; Gulbrandsen & Smeby, 2005).…”

The case of sleeping beauties in nanotechnology: a study of potential breakthrough inventions in emerging technologies

“…The literature suggests that nanotechnology is an interdisciplinary field positioned between physics and chemistry, with strong elements from other scientific fields such as life sciences and material science (Leydesdorff 2008;Leydesdorff and Zhou 2007;Hullmann and Meyer 2003;Huang et al 2011). Previous research also suggests that the prominent scientists in nanotechnology also have a higher probability of becoming prominent inventors with many, well cited patents (Bourelos et al 2017). These characteristics mean that nanotechnology may be relevant for many industrial applications and breakthrough inventions, with many underlying scientific fields and technological components.…”

“…Taking patents as indicative of technology, we identify patents which have both delayed recognition and high impact. We do so in the empirical area of nanotechnology, because it has been identified as an emerging technology with extensive science-technology interactions (Meyer 2001;Meyer et al 2010;Bourelos et al 2017) and identified by the European Commission (2012) as a KET, or Key Enabling Technology. We do so based on data extracted from the European Patent Office (EPO) dataset PATSTAT for the years 1956-2018.…”

Untitled

“…Research agreements, consultancy, and joint research are usually the relationships considered most important by several authors, along with patent licensing (Giannopoulou et al, 2010). In this respect, there is a concern about the possibility of attention shifting excessively to intellectual property rights at the expense of publishing research results -despite prior evidence indicating that patenting and publishing are complementary activities (Bourelos et al, 2017). Notwithstanding the possibility of contributing in different ways to an innovation environment, uni-versities embedded in peripheral regions face severe limitations regarding the availability of a research infrastructure that meets the needs of business partners.…”