Mapping of scientific patenting: toward the development of ‘J-GLOBAL foresight’

The Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) is in the process of building knowledge infrastructure by means of linking accumulated information assets to a variety of databases. It does not aim to develop knowledge data infrastructure based on proprietary format, but on an international standard format. JST is also in the process of creating ‘J-GLOBAL foresight’ [http://foresight.jst.go.jp (accessed June 2012)] in order to match up a variety of data such as results and indices of bibliometric analysis as well as of patent analysis derived from the knowledge infrastructure with applications like Google Maps and facilitate the visualisation of business information. This will contribute to help companies and institutions formulate business strategy based on the information obtained in the future. The former aims to be the bibliographic information version of the Data.gov, which discloses government data from the USA, while the latter seeks to be the Data-gov wiki version, which provides a demonstration by matching up governmental data with applications such as Google Maps.