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

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Abstract

This 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.

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Acknowledgments

This research is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project no. 70773006), the National Social Science Foundation of China (Project no. 10zd&014) and supported by the Innovation Foundation of BUAA for PhD graduates (Project no. YWF-10-02-385). The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions that have led to the improvement of this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Gangbo Wang

  2. School of Management, Graduate University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, People’s Republic of China

    Jiancheng Guan

  3. School of Management, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Jiancheng Guan

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  1. Gangbo Wang
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  2. Jiancheng Guan
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Correspondence to Jiancheng Guan.

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Wang, G., Guan, J. Measuring science–technology interactions using patent citations and author-inventor links: an exploration analysis from Chinese nanotechnology. J Nanopart Res 13, 6245–6262 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-011-0549-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-011-0549-y

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