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Science linkages between scientific articles and patents for leading scientists in the life and medical sciences field: the case of Japan

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Abstract

We analyze the distributions of paper–paper and paper-patent citations and estimate the relationship between them, based on a 4763-paper sample among the top 100 researchers in the life and medical sciences fields in Japan. We find that paper–paper citations peak at a 4-year average, while the corresponding lag for paper-patent citations is 6 years. Moreover, we show that paper quality is important for being cited by a patent. An inverse U-shaped relationship exists between the research grant and research quality, whereas a U-shaped relationship exists between research quality and total number of papers.

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Notes

  1. They use the NPRs cited on the front pages of US patents.

  2. Although Zucker and Darby (2001) define leading scientists (“star in their terminology”) as authors who discover nucleotide sequences, we define top researchers as authors with numerous total citation counts (see “Data” section).

  3. Citation is the one of the most commonly used indices of patent quality and related economic value (Harhoff et al. 1999). Rassenfosse (2013) uses family size because of selection bias in his survey, as it includes many countries.

  4. Thompson (2006) plots the distribution of cited patent ages using patent–patent citations and the backward citation approach. He shows that the age of examiner citations is younger than that of inventor citations.

  5. Since recently published papers have only had the opportunity to be cited for a few years, it is necessary to note that citations of these papers may not have yet peaked. However, because the median lag for paper-patent citations is 5 years, papers published during 05–07 are highly likely to have already peaked. We test another two subperiods (each year and three subperiods) by way of a robustness check and find the same tendency, namely that the median lag for paper-patent citations lag has shortened in recent years.

  6. Since only the linear prediction of marginal effects is available for the two-step estimation, the marginal effect is estimated by using the maximum likelihood estimator. Because the coefficient of the quadratic term of paper-paper citations is not statistically significant, we thus calculate the marginal effect by using Model 1.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Elsevier Japan for its assistance. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 25590074.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Science and Technology Policy, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, 3-2-2 Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 100-0013, Japan

    Naomi Fukuzawa

  2. Graduate School of Economics, Kyoto University, Yoshida, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan

    Takanori Ida

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  1. Naomi Fukuzawa
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  2. Takanori Ida
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Correspondence to Naomi Fukuzawa.

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Fukuzawa, N., Ida, T. Science linkages between scientific articles and patents for leading scientists in the life and medical sciences field: the case of Japan. Scientometrics 106, 629–644 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1795-z

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