The positive effect of academic invention and
ownership on citations to scientific articles:
universities vs public research organisations
Catalina Martínez, CSIC-IPP
with Joaquín Azagra-Caro, INGENIO CSIC-UPV
and Stéphane Maraut, Independent Researcher
10-11 May 2011
ESF-APE-INV workshop Scientists and Inventors
KU Leuven
2
Motivation and objectives
There is increasing pressure on public research systems to do research that is useful and
has social and economic impact (preferably if impact is tangible and visible soon)
Patents are seen as a measure of such impact, but academic researchers are still mainly
evaluated on the amount and, increasingly also, on the impact of their publications.
The question is: what if both policy objectives converged? What if academic inventors
published more and “higher impact” (in terms of citations received) research than their
non-inventor academic colleagues? If that is so, what are the implications for the use
and meaning of citations received as a measure of research impact? What do academic
inventors do better than non-inventor academics (in terms of research organisation and
targets) to be cited more often?
Our objective in this presentation is to participate in this debate, by attempting to
answer the following three questions using new data on publications of Spanish
academic inventors :
• What is the effect of patented knowledge on the impact of scientific publications?
• Does such effect differ depending on who owns the patent?
• Are there differences across academic institutions (universities v. public research
centers?)
3
Academic patenting and the quality of academic research
Most existing evidence indicates that there is a positive impact of patenting on the
quantity and quality of academic research: academic inventors publish more and their
work is cited more often than that of academic non-inventors:
• US universities: Agrawal and Henderson (2002); Stephan et al (2007); Fabrizio and
DiMinim (2008); Azoulay et al (2009); Murray and Stern (2007
• European universities: Calderini and Franzoni (2004); van Looy et al (2006);
Carayol (2007); Franzoni et al (2007); Meyer (2006); Breschi et al (2005, 2007,
2008); Czarnitzki et al (2009, 2011); Crespi et al (2011); Mejer (2011)
• European public research centers: Buenstorf (2009)
Studies on academic patenting in Spain (academic-owned): Azagra et al (2003); Azagra
et al (2007); Azagra and Romero (2009); Gonzalez-Albo and Zulueta (2007); BarrioCastro and Garcia-Quevedo (2009); Ortega (2011). Academic invented patents:
Verspagen (2006); Azagra (2011)
The literature on the determinants of citations received by an article have identified the
following as important, among others:
• International coauthorship (access to different networks)
• Length of list of references (possibly indicating survey)
• Length of title (possibly indicating more keywords)
4
Spanish academic system
High production in quantitative terms, low impact. According to Scimago country rank, Spain
takes the 9th position in the country ranking of Scopus publications, but 18th in terms of cites per
document, considering only countries with more than 100,000 in 1996-2010
(http://www.scimagojr.com)
Public universities are, at least by volume, the most important player in the Spanish academic
system, but public research organisations are also key. Public research organisations are a
heterogeneous population in Spain, dominated by CSIC (more than 100 centers , some joint with
other institutions, with more than 6.000 research staff performing research in almost all disciplines),
but also including traditional field specific mission-oriented centers (e.g. CIEMAT in energy and
environment) and a new kind of public research centres with a strong drive (and large budgets) to
perform research that pursues excellence and socioeconomic benefits such as Centro Nacional de
Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO), Centro de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (Cruz-Castro, SanzMenéndez and Martínez, 2011)
2003-2008 Scopus
academic publications
by author affiliation
5
Available data gives only partial view of academic contributions
2003-2008 Scopus publications
with and without Spanish academic authors
Source: Own elaboration based on Scopus and Scimago
normalisation of institutions.
1978-2009 EPO filings
with and without Spanish academic applicants
Source: Own elaboration based on Patstat and
KUL/Eurostat sectoral classification of applicants
Need to do author-inventor matching to address our questions and get: 1) publications of
Spanish academic inventors; 2) Spanish patent applications with Spanish academic inventors
6
Scopus-Patstat matching and disambiguation methodology (Maraut and Martinez 2012)
PERSON & INSTITUTIONS
NAME & ADDRESS MATCHING
Scopus-Scopus, Patstat-Patstat
Scopus-Patstat
• I. Structuration
• Tokenisation
• Detection of non-name
information
• Classification of name components
• II. Token matching
• Prefiltering
• Token comparison
• Token score
• III. Name matching
• Prefiltering
• Name comparison
• Name Score
PERSON DISAMBIGUATION
Scopus-Patstat
RECURSIVE VALIDATION
Scopus-Patstat
• I. Name similarity variables
• Name matching score and rarity
• II. Disambiguation direct variables
• Same region author-inventor
• Same/compatible institution authorinventor
• Same/compatible field article-patent
• III. Disambiguation indirect variables
• Author has same affiliation as coinventor,
if n.a. for inventor
• Author has same affiliation as coinventor
in other family members, if n.a. for
inventor in EPO patent
• Non technical area of author
• IV. Global score
• Based on name similarity, name rarity,
direct and indirect disambiguation
variables
• V. Clusters
• Consolidation of all author IDs and all
inventor IDs corresponding to a single
person from matches above a certain
threshold.
• I. Manual checks of positive matches
• Focus on potential “faux amis” based on
inconsistencies from patstat-patstat
and/or scopus-scopus name matching
• Use all possible information available
(previous phases, Internet search, etc)
• II.Recursive disambiguation
• Calculate new indirect disambiguation
variables taking information from the
validated matches (e.g.
coauthors=coinventors)
• Recalculate global score and new clusters
(previous phases IV and V) taking into
account the new variables, repeat until all
potential “faux amis” are controlled.
7
Results from the Patstat-Scopus matching
(Maraut and Martinez 2012)
968,695
Author ID
From 277,937
publications
(SCOPUS)
3,413 authorinventors
(40,085 Author ID,
7,661 Inventor ID)
With 25,658
publications and
3,788 EPO filings
30,277
Inventor ID
from 16,741
EPO filings
(PATSTAT)
Data sources:
• Scopus
• Patstat
• Frequency of Spanish names and surnames, Spanish National Official Statistics Institute (INE)
• Scimago normalisation of Scopus author institutions
• OECD Regpat (Maraut et al 2008)
• Scopus-Patstat fields correspondence (Schmoch et al 2011)
• KUL/Eurostat normalisation of Patstat applicant institutions (van Looy et al 2011)
8
Now we can draw a third line in each graph…
2003-2008 Scopus publications
with Spanish academic authors
Source: Own elaboration based on Scopus and Scimago
normalisation of institutions.
1978-2009 EPO filings
with Spanish academic applicants
Source: Own elaboration based on Patstat Sep. 2010 and
KUL/Eurostat sectoral classification of applicants
9
…and address our initial questions
What is the effect of patented knowledge on the impact of scientific publications?
Does such effect differ depending on who owns the patent?
Are there differences across academic institutions?
(Azagra, Martinez, Maraut, 2012)
10
Data
From Scopus
From Scopus
From Scopus
Matching Scopus to
Patstat
From Patstat
Initial set of articles
(196,969)
Outliers (3,694)
Non-outliers
(193,275)
Articles without
academic authors
(38,231)
Articles with
academic authors
(155,044)
Articles without academic
inventors (141,425)
Articles with academic
inventors (13,619)
Of patents not owned or coowned by academic
institutions (5,059)
Of patents owned or coowned by academic
institutions (8,560)
From the 3,413 author-inventors identified in the full matching Scopus-Patstat just described, we retain
2.892 with articles published after patents filings (but no more than 25 years later) of which we
further eliminate those with non-academic affiliations, what leaves 2,202 academic inventors.
11
Descriptive statistics
Academic articles
(n=155,044)
Academic articles with
academic inventors
(n=13,619)
Academic articles with
academic inventors of
academic owned patents
(n=8,560)
Mean Std.
Min Max
Dev.
Variable
Mean Std.
Dev.
Min
Max
Mean
Std.
Dev.
Min
Max
cites (until end 2009)
cityear
refcount
lentitle
aunbr
6.28
3.17
33.93
90.64
5.72
8.04
1.69
23.53
41.86
22.79
0
1
0
0
1
46
6
2,286
374
3,031
8.05
3.03
34.84
95.35
5.92
8.81
1.64
20.77
44.98
25.05
0
1
0
0
1
46
6
589
290
2,907
8.11
2.93
35.23
95.54
6.19
8.79
1.60
20.65
44.94
31.51
0
1
0
0
1
daunones
dauesnonac
dauesacinv
dauesacinvacown
dauesacinv_csic
dauesacinv_csicother
dauesacinv_prc
dauesacinvacown_csic
dauesacinvacown_csicother
dauesacinvacown_prc
0.40
0.10
0.09
-
0.49
0.30
0.28
-
0
0
0
-
1
1
1
-
0.34
0.11
0.63
0.23
0.11
0.07
-
0.47
0.32
0.48
0.42
0.32
0.25
-
0
0
0
0
0
0
-
1
1
1
1
1
1
-
0.35
0.11
0.28
0.13
0.07
0.48
0.31
0.45
0.34
0.25
0
0
0
0
0
46
6
589
279
2,90
7
1
1
1
1
1
12
Average number of citations received until end 2009
over years lapsed since publication
13
H1:Scientific publications are more cited if at least one author is an
academic inventor
Variable
cityear
lcityear
refcount
lrefcount
lentitle
llentitle
aunbr
launbr
daunones
dauesnonac
dauesacinv
_cons
N
r2
r2_a
F
chi2
ll
Academic articles
Negative
Binomial
OLS
cites
ln(cites+1)
0.33***
0.73***
0.01***
0.35***
0.00***
0.01***
Consistently with other studies, time lapsed since
publication of the article, number of references, title
length, number of authors and foreign authors have a
positive and significant impact on citations received by
scientific articles written by academic authors.
0.00***
0.25***
0.12***
0.23***
-0.06***
155,044
49014.18
-4.22E+05
0.25***
0.09***
-0.05***
0.16***
-0.87***
155,044
0.35
0.35
2452.31
-1.93E+05
p<.05; ** p<.01; *** p<.001.
Estimations include 27 dummies for scientific fields
Our estimations also show that having academic
inventors among the authors have a positive effect on
citations, confirming Hypothesis 1.
14
H2: Scientific publications written by academic inventors are more
cited if their patents are owned or co-owned by academic
institutions.
Academic articles with academic inventors
Negative
Binomial
OLS
Variable
cites
ln(cites+1)
cityear
lcityear
refcount
lrefcount
lentitle
llentitle
aunbr
launbr
daunones
dauesnonac
dauesacinv_acown
_cons
N
r2
r2_a
F
chi2
ll
0.32***
0.80***
0.01***
0.36***
0
0
0.01*
0.14***
0.03
0.09***
0.42***
13,619
4084.5
-40787.34
0.22***
0.03
-0.07**
0.04**
-0.57***
13,619
0.33
0.33
194.85
-16568.62
p<.05; ** p<.01; *** p<.001.
Estimations include 27 dummies for scientific fields
Limiting the sample to articles written by academic
inventors, our estimations show that having academic
authors-inventors with academic-owned patents has a
positive effect on citations, confirming Hypothesis 2.
15
H3: The positive effect of academic invention and ownership on citations
received is higher in public research organisations than in public universities
Variable
cityear
refcount
lentitle
aunbr
daunones
dauesnonac
dauesacinv_csic
dauesacinv_csicother
dauesiacnv_prc
dauesacinvacown_csic
dauesacinvacown_csicother
dauesacinvacown_prc
_cons
lnalpha
_cons
Statistics
N
chi2
ll
Academic articles
with academic
inventors
Negative Binomial
cites
0.32***
0.01***
0
0.01*
0.14***
0.02
0.04*
0.20***
0.27***
Academic articles
with academic
inventors of
academic owned
patents
Negative Binomial
cites
0.33***
0.01***
0
0
0.13***
0.04
0.40***
0.04
0.21***
0.30***
0.50***
-0.28***
-0.30***
13,157
4038.92
-39328.46
8,272
2484.01
-24827.16
Repeating the previous regressions, now with
a breakdown of academic authors and
academic authors-inventors by type of
institution of the author, our estimations
show that the positive impact of academic
invention and ownership on citations is
highest for public research centers than for
public universities (category of reference),
confirming Hypothesis 3.
Among the public research organisations, the
impact is highest for non CSIC public research
centers (prc), followed by CSIC joint centers
with other institutions (csicother) and, lastly,
other CSIC centers (csic).
p<.05; ** p<.01; *** p<.001.
Estimations include 27 dummies for scientific fields
Articles of authors with multiple academic affiliations are
excluded to build four groups: universities, CSIC, CSIC-other and
PRC.
16
Discussion and further work
• Do academic invention and ownership really deserve extra impact or is it a question of
institutional egocentrism?
• Do universities have anything to learn from PROs?
• Are university-non university mixed research centres the solution?
Further work
• Substitute inventor and ownership dummies for actual numbers of patents, weighted by
citations and depreciated.
• Suggestions welcome