ART: Meyer, Patents Citing Scientific Literature: Is the Relationship Causal or Casual?

[Gretchen Whitney]

Meyer, Martin
Science Policy Research Unit
University of Sussex
 msmeyer at hotmail.com

Patents Citing Scientific Literature: is the Relationship Causal or
Casual?

Institute for Prospective Technological Studies Reports, Vol. 28,
Oct. 1998

http://www.jrc.es/pages/iptsreport/vol28/english/ITP1E286.htm

"Issue: Recent research reports on a rapidly growing tendency for US
patents to cite scientific papers. But is a citation linkage also a
causal link? Previous work has given only a very general indication of
relationship between science and technology in a very general manner.

Relevance: In times of strict budgetary discipline even basic research
needs to provide documentary evidence of industrial relevance. However, it
is important to avoid a mistaken impression that knowledge transfer from
scientific research to patents is a direct process and one that is easily
measured by the number of citations. Although case-by-case analysis shows
the limitations of this particular bibliometric technique, it nevertheless
reveals the importance of results, tacit knowledge and skills acquired
through scientific research."

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Gretchen Whitney, PhD                                     tel 423.974.7919
School of Information Sciences                            fax 423.974.4967
University of Tennessee, Knoxville TN 37996 USA           gwhitney at utk.edu
http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/
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