Credit: Luciano Lozano / Alamy Stock Photo
Charting the influence of science on innovation
An analysis of the biggest industry influencers in four charts.
18 August 2017
Luciano Lozano / Alamy Stock Photo
Governments are eager to demonstrate that publicly funded science is being used to create products or services that benefit society. It is difficult, however, to precisely measure the influence of science on innovation. One indicator of the connection between science and technology worth considering, but often overlooked, are the references in patents to literature. At best, these citations infer that published science may have influenced or inspired the invention. The Lens.org is an open database that links more than 100 million patent documents to more than a million scholarly articles via patent citations.
A subset of data from the Lens has measured patent citations for 200 institutions, creating a Normalized Lens Influence Metric (Lens metric) that demonstrates the influence an institution’s articles published between 1980–2015 have had on patents. See full list of 200 institutions included in analysis here, and details on the Lens metric here.
The analysis suggests there is some association between high-quality science and its influence on inventions. For an alternative perspective, we also look at a group of institutions that have extensive patent portfolios relative to their number of research articles, an indicator of the economic potential institutions place on their discoveries.
Souce: Lens.org / Nature Index / Clarivate
Of the 200 institutions included in the Lens analysis, the highest performing institutions in the Nature Index are included in the graph below. Those institutions with a high percentage of articles in journals included in the index, graphed on the y-axis, tend to have a higher Lens metric, a measure of an institutions’ influence on patents. Full size image
Source: Lens.org / Clarivate
Of the journals featured in the Lens analysis, those included in the index are ranked by their average patent citation per article, where multidisciplinary journals perform better than most of the specialist journals. Journals’ portion of articles cited in patents are shown as percentages. Full size image
Souce: Lens.org / Nature Index
Some of the highest ranked institutions by Lens metric publish a high percentage of articles in journals included in the index, measured by normalized weighted fractional count (WFC/total natural science articles 2012-2016). Full size image
Source: Lens.org / Clarivate Analytics
A high proportion of research by The Scripps Research Institute is cited by patents owned by others, giving the institution a high Lens metric. Whereas institutions such as France’s Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission tend to patent a greater portion of their research, giving it a higher normalized WIPO patent families score (WIPO patent families/STEM articles 2016). Full size image