Measuring science-technology interactions using patent citations and author-inventor links: an exploration analysis from Chinese nanotechnology

Autores: Wang, G.B.|Guan, J.C.
Fuente: Journal of nanoparticle research
13(12), 6245-6262
2011

his article contributes to the growing study on the interactions between science and technology with China–s evidence in the field of nanotechnology, based on the database of United States Patent and Trademark Office. The analysis is focused during the period of 1991-2008, a rapid increasing period for the development of nanotechnology. Using the non-patent references cited by patents, we first investigate the science-technology connections in the context of Chinese nanotechnology, especially in institutional sectors and its application fields. Those patents, produced by academic researchers and directed towards basic scientific knowledge, generally cite more scientific references with a higher proportion of self-citations. It is interesting to find that patents contributed by collaborations between public organizations and corporations seldom contain scientific references. Following an interesting path on matching the data of publications and patents, we establish the author-inventor links in this emerging field. Author-inventors, who are co-active in publishing and patenting, are at the very top of the most prolific and highly cited researchers. Finally, we employ social network analysis to explore the characteristics of scientific and technological networks generated by co-authorship and co-invention data, to investigate the position and the role of patenting-publishing scientists in these research networks.