Science quality and the value of inventions

Poege, Felix; Harhoff, Dietmar; Gaessler, Fabian; Baruffaldi, Stefano Horst

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aay7323

Cited by 67 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…This finding is in contradiction with the results of a recent study by Fleming et al [ 11 ], which shows that private companies do not appear to be interested in pursuing (or publishing) basic science and underinvest in research. These results seem supported by a recent study indicating that patents held by private companies rely on high quality research produced by academia [ 12 ]. However, these two studies used data up to 2016, while we examined data from 2015 to 2019, thus our results may represent a more recent trend (specifically related to emerging private companies specialized in internet-related services, technology, and data analytics).…”

Section: Main Textsupporting

confidence: 78%

The current crisis of academia-led research: a threat to the common good? Preliminary data from Europe and the United States

et al. 2020

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Objective This research note aimed to analyze the scientific productivity trends 2015–2019, focusing on the top 30 universities in Europe and United States and on the top 30 private companies—as classified in the SCImago Institutions Ranking. Our hypothesis is that private companies are gaining an increasingly prominent role in the research field, while academia is losing its predominance. Results From 2015 to 2019, all universities in Europe and the United States lost positions in the scientific production ranking, while private companies gained positions. These trends seem to be driven mainly by the scientific productivity sub-indicator “Innovation”. These data suggest that the role private companies will play in the future will not be limited to support research economically or influence it from “outside”. Private companies have taken a path that may lead them to directly control all stages of production/communication of knowledge, including research—a role once bestowed on universities. Our data, although preliminary, seem to suggest that, at present, academia risks losing its predominance in the research field. This scenario deserves attention because of the threats it may pose to the independence of research and its role in supporting human equity and sustainable health for all.

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Section: Main Textsupporting

confidence: 78%

The current crisis of academia-led research: a threat to the common good? Preliminary data from Europe and the United States

et al. 2020

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“…Overall, our findings show that BITNET induced more science-related patenting. This is an interesting result since science-based patents are particularly valuable on average (Poege et al, 2019;Watzinger and Schnitzer, 2019) but there are many barriers to translating scientific insights to actual innovation (e.g., Bikard, 2018). The types of collaborations that BITNET induced seem to produce knowledge that directly translates to patenting.…”

Section: Bitnet Induced Science-based Patentingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most importantly, these new collaborations seem to translate scientific insights into innovation. Since patents close to science are particularly valuable (Poege et al, 2019;Watzinger and Schnitzer, 2019;Arora et al, 2019) and we do not completely understand under which circumstances they emerge (e.g., Bikard, 2018;Bikard and Marx, 2020), this is a valuable contribution.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

ICT, Collaboration, and Science-Based Innovation: Evidence from Bitnet

2020

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Does access to information and communication technologies (ICT) increase innovation? We examine this question by exploiting the staggered adoption of BITNET across U.S. universities in the 1980s. BITNET, an early version of the Internet, enabled e-mail-based knowledge exchange and collaboration among academics. After the adoption of BITNET, university-connected inventors increase patenting substantially. The effects are driven by collaborative patents by new inventor teams. The patents induced by ICT are exclusively science-related and stem from fields where knowledge can be codified easily. In contrast, we neither find an effect on patents not building on science nor on inventors unconnected to universities.

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“…They ranked "patents by the quality of the science they are linked to. Strikingly, high-rank patents are twice as valuable as low-rank patents, which in turn are about as valuable as patents without direct science link" (Poege et al, 2019).…”

Section: Wilsdon Et Al (2015) Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altmetrics and societal impact measurements: Match or mismatch? A literature review

Tahamtan¹,

Bornmann²

2020

EPI

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Can alternative metrics (altmetrics) data be used to measure societal impact? We wrote this literature overview of empirical studies in order to find an answer to this question. The overview includes two parts. The first part, "societal impact measurements", explains possible methods and problems in measuring the societal impact of research, case studies for societal impact measurement, societal impact considerations at funding organizations, and the societal problems that should be solved by science. The second part of the review, "altmetrics", addresses a major question in research evaluation, which is whether altmetrics are proper indicators for measuring the societal impact of research. In the second part we explain the data sources used for altmetrics studies and the importance of field-normalized indicators for impact measurements. This review indicates that it should be relevant for impact measurements to be oriented towards pressing societal problems. Case studies in which societal impact of certain pieces of research is explained seem to provide a legitimate method for measuring societal impact. In the use of altmetrics, field-specific differences should be considered by applying field normalization (in cross-field comparisons). Altmetrics data such as social media counts might mainly reflect the public interest and discussion of scholarly works rather than their societal impact. Altmetrics (Twitter data) might be especially fruitfully employed for research evaluation purposes, if they are used in the context of network approaches. Conclusions based on altmetrics data in research evaluation should be drawn with caution.

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Science quality and the value of inventions

Abstract: Common quality measures for scientific work predict the commercial value of patents directly or indirectly derived from them.

Cited by 67 publications

References 40 publications

The current crisis of academia-led research: a threat to the common good? Preliminary data from Europe and the United States

The current crisis of academia-led research: a threat to the common good? Preliminary data from Europe and the United States

ICT, Collaboration, and Science-Based Innovation: Evidence from Bitnet

Altmetrics and societal impact measurements: Match or mismatch? A literature review

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