Measuring impacts of academic science on industrial research: A citation-based approach

SummaryThis paper introduces a citation-based metholodology to characterize and measure the magnitude and intensity of knowledge flows and knowledge spillovers from the public research sector to basic and strategic research in the private sector. We present results derived from an interrelated series of statistical analyses based on Private-to-Public Citations (PrPuCs) within reference lists of the research articles produced by industrial researchers during the years 1996-2003. The first part of the results provides an overview of PrPuC statistics worldwide for OECD countries. Overall, 70% to 80% of those references within corporate research papers relate to papers produced by public research organizations. When controlling for the size of their public sector research bases, Switzerland and the United States appear to be the major suppliers of 'citable' scientific knowledge for industrial research - the value of their Corporate Citation Intensity (CCI) exceeds their statistically expected value by more than 25%. A country's CCI performance turns out to be closely related to the citation impact of the entire domestic science base. The second section deals with an exploratory case study devoted to Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, one of the corporate sector's major research areas. The findings include a list of the major citing and cited sources at the level of countries and organizations, as well as an analysis of PrPuCs as a “missing link”connection intra-science citations and citations received from corporate science-based patents.