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Longitudinal study on patent citations to academic research articles in nanotechnology (1976–2004)

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Abstract

Academic nanoscale science and engineering (NSE) research provides a foundation for nanotechnology innovation reflected in patents. About 60% or about 50,000 of the NSE-related patents identified by “full-text” keyword searching between 1976 and 2004 at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) have an average of approximately 18 academic citations. The most cited academic journals, individual researchers, and research articles have been evaluated as sources of technology innovation in the NSE area over the 28-year period. Each of the most influential articles was cited about 90 times on the average, while the most influential author was cited more than 700 times by the NSE-related patents. Thirteen mainstream journals accounted for about 20% of all citations. Science, Nature and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) have consistently been the top three most cited journals, with each article being cited three times on average. There is another kind of influential journals, represented by Biosystems and Origin of Life, which have very few articles cited but with exceptionally high frequencies. The number of academic citations per year from ten most cited journals has increased by over 17 times in the interval (1990–1999) as compared to (1976–1989), and again over 3 times in the interval (2000–2004) as compared to (1990–1999). This is an indication of increased used of academic knowledge creation in the NSE-related patents.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the following grants: NSF, “SGER: Intelligent Patent Analysis for Nanoscale Science and Engineering,” IIS-0311652, May 2003–April 2005, and “SGER: NanoMap: Mapping Nanotechnology Development,” DMI-0533749, August 2005–July 2007. We would like to thank the United States Patent and Trademark Office for their support during the research. The last co-author was supported by the Directorate of Engineering.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of Management Information Systems, Eller College of Management, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Daning Hu & Hsinchun Chen

  2. Department of Supply Chain and Information Systems, Smeal College of Business, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Zan Huang

  3. National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA, 22230, USA

    Mihail C. Roco

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  1. Daning Hu
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  2. Hsinchun Chen
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  3. Zan Huang
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  4. Mihail C. Roco
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Correspondence to Daning Hu.

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Hu, D., Chen, H., Huang, Z. et al. Longitudinal study on patent citations to academic research articles in nanotechnology (1976–2004) . J Nanopart Res 9, 529–542 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-007-9215-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-007-9215-9

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