Intellectual Property Rights and
the Evolution of Scientific Journals as Knowledge Platforms
Daniel Fehder1 Fiona Murray2 Scott Stern3
Abstract
Scientific journals serve as two-sided knowledge platforms that facilitate the diffusion of
scientific knowledge. Journals offer an outlet for scientists to disclose their findings in a way
that allow others to evaluate the importance of their discoveries (e.g., through the reviewing
process and the reputation of a journal) and, at the same time, are a principal means by which
follow-on researchers can gain detailed access to the knowledge underlying scientific
discoveries. For scientific discoveries that may also have commercial applications,
researchers (or their funders) may also seek to establish formal intellectual property
protection (e.g., patents); choosing to establish a “patent-paper pair” allows researchers to
influence the use of knowledge that has been disclosed within the scientific literature. This
paper evaluates the interrelationship between scientific journal publication and patenting by
examining the incidence and impact of patent-paper pairs in two particular journals, Nature
Biotechnology and Nature Materials. We develop a dataset based on all research publication
in these journals from their founding through the mid-2000s, and collect detailed information
on citations to and from these papers. Patent paper pairs are much more likely to be
associated with research discoveries in which at least one author is employed by the private
sector, and is also much more likely for articles with at least one author within the United
States. Publications associated with patent-paper pairs have a higher overall rate of citation,
but this finding masks significant heterogeneity across time and across journals. For example,
patent-paper pairs published in the first few years after each journal is founded receive much
lower level of citations. Moreover, using a differences-in-differences framework that exploits
the long delay between publication and patent grant, the negative impact of patent grant is
concentrated in the first few years after journal founding. Finally, after patent grant, there is
an increase in citation by follow-on research published in other journal but a decline in
citations in follow-on research published in the originating journal. Similar to recent evidence
about the interrelationship between standard-setting organizations and intellectual property,
our findings highlight the role of scientific journals as a particular type of two-sided
platforms, and the subtle impact of intellectual property in shaping the use of knowledge
disclosed and accessed through that platform.
1
MIT Sloan School of Management
MIT Sloan School of Management and MIT Entrepreneurship Center
3
MIT Sloan School of Management and NBER
2