The role of patenting activity for scientific research: A study of academic inventors from China's nanotechnology

Scientists from universities are becoming more proactive in their efforts to commercialize research results. Patenting, as an important channel of university knowledge transfer, has initiated a controversy on potential effects for the future of scientific research. This paper contributes to the growing study on the relationship between patenting and publishing among faculty members with China's evidence in the field of nanotechnology. Data from top 32 most prolific universities in patenting are used to examine the relationship, consisting of 6321 confirmed academic inventors who both publish and patent over the time period 1991–2008. By controlling for heterogeneity of patenting activities, patenting experience, institutional affiliation and collaboration with foreign researchers, the findings in China's nanotechnology generally support earlier investigations concluding that patenting activity does not adversely affect research output. Patenting, however, has negative impacts on both quantity and quality of university researchers’ publication output, when the assignee lists include corporations or scientists themselves.

[1]  Pluvia Zúñiga,et al.  The State of Patenting at Research Institutions in Developing Countries : Policy Approaches and Practices , 2011, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[2]  Martin Meyer,et al.  Knowledge integrators or weak links? An exploratory comparison of patenting researchers with their non-inventing peers in nano-science and technology , 2006, Scientometrics.

[3]  Michel Zitt,et al.  Delineating complex scientific fields by an hybrid lexical-citation method: An application to nanosciences , 2006, Inf. Process. Manag..

[4]  Waverly W. Ding,et al.  The Determinants of Faculty Patenting Behavior: Demographics or Opportunities? , 2005 .

[5]  Jiancheng Guan,et al.  China's emerging presence in nanoscience and nanotechnology: A comparative bibliometric study of several nanoscience ‘giants’ , 2007 .

[6]  R. Merton.  The Normative Structure of Science , 1973 .

[7]  L. Xue.  Universities in China's National Innovation System , 2006 .

[8]  Ronald N. Kostoff.  Citation analysis cross-field normalization: A new paradigm , 2006, Scientometrics.

[9]  Martin Meyer,et al.  Publications and patents in nanotechnology , 2003, Scientometrics.

[10]  Tibor Braun,et al.  Nanoscience and nanotecnology on the balance , 1997, Scientometrics.

[11]  M. Meyer,et al.  Are patenting scientists the better scholars? , 2005, Proceedings. 2005 IEEE International Engineering Management Conference, 2005..

[12]  J. Youtie,et al.  Nanotechnology publications and citations by leading countries and blocs , 2008 .

[13]  Yuan-Chieh Chang,et al.  The Impacts of Academic Patenting and Licensing on Knowledge Production and Diffusion: A Test of the Anti-Commons Effect in Taiwan , 2008 .

[14]  Eugene Garfield,et al.  New factors in the evaluation of scientific literature through citation indexing , 1963 .

[15]  Koenraad Debackere,et al.  Linking science to technology: Using bibliographic references in patents to build linkage schemes , 2004, Scientometrics.

[16]  Francis Narin,et al.  Is technology becoming science? , 1985, Scientometrics.

[17]  Isabel Gómez,et al.  Advantages and limitations in the use of impact factor measures for the assessment of research performance , 2002, Scientometrics.

[18]  Z. Griliches,et al.  Econometric Models for Count Data with an Application to the Patents-R&D Relationship , 1984 .

[19]  Wolfgang Glänzel,et al.  Patents cited in the scientific literature: An exploratory study of 'reverse' citation relations , 2004, Scientometrics.

[20]  Xue.  Universities in China ’ s National Innovation System , .

[21]  Andrea Vezzulli,et al.  If star scientists do not patent: The effect of productivity, basicness and impact on the decision to patent in the academic world , 2007 .

[22]  Henk F. Moed,et al.  Handbook of Quantitative Science and Technology Research: The Use of Publication and Patent Statistics in Studies of S&T Systems , 2004 .

[23]  Ronald Rousseau,et al.  Key Labs and Open Labs in the Chinese scientific research system: Their role in the national and international scientific arena , 2006, Scientometrics.

[24]  S. Breschi,et al.  THE SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTIVITY OF ACADEMIC INVENTORS: NEW EVIDENCE FROM ITALIAN DATA , 2007 .

[25]  Arvids A. Ziedonis,et al.  Academic patent quality and quantity before and after the Bayh-Dole act in the United States , 2002 .

[26]  A. Geuna,et al.  University patenting and its effects on academic research: The emerging European evidence , 2006 .

[27]  W. Powell,et al.  To Patent or Not: Faculty Decisions and Institutional Success at Technology Transfer , 2001 .

[28]  Chunli Bai,et al.  Ascent of Nanoscience in China , 2005, Science.

[29]  Waverly W. Ding,et al.  The Impact of Academic Patenting on the Rate, Quality and Direction of (Public) Research Output , 2009 .

[30]  Henk F. Moed,et al.  Measuring China"s research performance using the Science Citation Index , 2002, Scientometrics.

[31]  M. Hassan,et al.  Small Things and Big Changes in the Developing World , 2005, Science.

[32]  Ulrich Schmoch,et al.  Indicators and the relations between science and technology , 2006, Scientometrics.

[33]  Koenraad Debackere,et al.  Publication and patent behavior of academic researchers: Conflicting, reinforcing or merely co-existing? , 2006 .

[34]  Magnus Gulbrandsen,et al.  The relationship between academic patenting and scientific publishing in Norway , 2009, Scientometrics.

[35]  Andrei Mogoutov,et al.  Data search strategy for science and technology emergence: A scalable and evolutionary query for nanotechnology tracking , 2007 .

[36]  P. Zhou,et al.  The Emergence of China as a Leading Nation in Science. Research Policy, 35(1), 2006, 83-104. , 2006, 0911.3421.

[37]  Jeffrey M. Wooldridge,et al.  Solutions Manual and Supplementary Materials for Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data , 2003 .

[38]  Norman Kaplan,et al.  The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations , 1974 .

[39]  Hsinchun Chen,et al.  Worldwide nanotechnology development: a comparative study of USPTO, EPO, and JPO patents (1976–2004) , 2007 .

[40]  E. Garfield.  Citation analysis as a tool in journal evaluation. , 1972, Science.

[41]  Rebecca Henderson,et al.  Reprinted Article Putting patents in context: Exploring knowledge transfer from MIT , 2009 .

[42]  Nicola Baldini,et al.  Negative effects of university patenting: Myths and grounded evidence , 2008, Scientometrics.

[43]  Hariolf Grupp,et al.  Exploring the science and technology interface: inventor-author relations in laser medicine research , 1994 .

[44]  J. Wooldridge.  Distribution-free estimation of some nonlinear panel data models , 1999 .

[45]  Guido Buenstorf,et al.  Is commercialization good or bad for science? Individual-level evidence from the Max Planck Society , 2009 .

[46]  Kevin W. Boyack,et al.  Measuring science-technology interaction using rare inventor-author names , 2008, J. Informetrics.

[47]  Loet Leydesdorff,et al.  Nanotechnology as a field of science: Its delineation in terms of journals and patents , 2007, Scientometrics.

[48]  Nicolas Carayol,et al.  Does research organization influence academic production?: Laboratory level evidence from a large European university , 2004 .

[49]  Weiping Wu,et al.  Managing and incentivizing research commercialization in Chinese Universities , 2010 .

[50]  Joachim Schummer,et al.  Multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and patterns of research collaboration in nanoscience and nanotechnology , 2004, Scientometrics.

[51]  Stefano Breschi,et al.  University patenting and scientific productivity: a quantitative study of Italian academic inventors , 2008 .

[52]  J. Youtie,et al.  Refining search terms for nanotechnology , 2008 .

[53]  Kira Fabrizio,et al.  Commercializing the laboratory: Faculty patenting and the open science environment , 2008 .

[54]  Wolfgang Glänzel,et al.  Heterogeneity of Patenting Activity and Its Implications for Scientific Research , 2007 .

[55]  J. Mathews,et al.  China's national innovative capacity , 2008 .

[56]  Ronald N. Kostoff,et al.  Quality vs. quantity of publications in nanotechnology field from the People’s Republic of China , 2008 .

[57]  Michel Zitt,et al.  Patents and Publications , 2004 .