Patent citation analysis with Google

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Wiley-Blackwell in Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology on 23/09/2015, available online: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23608 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Citations from patents to scientific publications provide useful evidence about the commercial impact of academic research, but automatically searchable databases are needed to exploit this connection for large-scale patent citation evaluations. Google covers multiple different international patent office databases but does not index patent citations or allow automatic searches. In response, this article introduces a semiautomatic indirect method via Bing to extract and filter patent citations from Google to academic papers with an overall precision of 98%. The method was evaluated with 322,192 science and engineering Scopus articles from every second year for the period 1996–2012. Although manual Google Patent searches give more results, especially for articles with many patent citations, the difference is not large enough to be a major problem. Within Biomedical Engineering, Biotechnology, and Pharmacology & Pharmaceutics, 7% to 10% of Scopus articles had at least one patent citation but other fields had far fewer, so patent citation analysis is only relevant for a minority of publications. Low but positive correlations between Google Patent citations and Scopus citations across all fields suggest that traditional citation counts cannot substitute for patent citations when evaluating research

Evaluación de la transferencia de conocimiento e innovación de las universidades españolas

The European strategy Horizon 2020 focuses on the transition to the knowledge society. To that end, the European Commission put the universities at the centre due to their ability to connect and collaborate with other sectors, particularly the business sector. Although their efforts have been aimed at creating synergies among the sectors involved, their evaluation has been largely left aside. This study uses metadata from SCOPUS and from the Spanish Patent Office. Its aim is to assess the transfer of knowledge from the perspective of the university. For this, collaborations between universities, with companies, and with government institutions are used. The assessment is performed from the whole network generated by the Spanish universities. The results obtained show the degree of connectivity of each university, its degree of influence and its connectivity with leading institutions in terms of knowledge transfer and innovation.La estrategia europea Horizon 2020 se centra en la transición hacia la sociedad del conocimiento. Con este objetivo, la Comisión Europea ha elegido a las universidades por su capacidad para conectar y colaborar con otros sectores, particularmente el empresarial. Si bien sus esfuerzos se han dirigido a crear sinergias entre los sectores implicados, se ha obviado su evaluación. El estudio que se presenta utiliza metadatos de SCOPUS y de la Oficina Española de Patentes. Se pretende evaluar la transferencia de conocimiento desde la perspectiva de la universidad. Para ello, se emplean las colaboraciones de las universidades con otras universidades, con empresas y con instituciones gubernamentales. La evaluación se hace conjuntamente a partir de la red que las universidades españolas generan en su conjunto. Los resultados obtenidos muestran el grado de conectividad de cada universidad, su grado de influencia y su conectividad con instituciones líderes en innovación y transferencia de conocimiento

Can web indicators be used to estimate the citation impact of conference papers in engineering?

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.Although citation counts are widely used to support research evaluation, they can only reflect academic impacts, whereas research can also be useful outside academia. There is therefore a need for alternative indicators and empirical studies to evaluate them. Whilst many previous studies have investigated alternative indicators for journal articles and books, this thesis explores the importance and suitability of four web indicators for conference papers. These are readership counts from the online reference manager Mendeley and citation counts from Google Patents, Wikipedia and Google Books. To help evaluate these indicators for conference papers, correlations with Scopus citations were evaluated for each alternative indicator and compared with corresponding correlations between alternative indicators and citation counts for journal articles. Four subject areas that value conferences were chosen for the analysis: Computer Science Applications; Computer Software Engineering; Building & Construction Engineering; and Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering. There were moderate correlations between Mendeley readership counts and Scopus citation counts for both journal articles and conference papers in Computer Science Applications and Computer Software. For conference papers in Building & Construction Engineering and Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering, the correlations between Mendeley readers and citation counts are much lower than for journal articles. Thus, in fields where conferences are important, Mendeley readership counts are reasonable impact indicators for conference papers although they are better impact indicators for journal articles. Google Patent citations had low positive correlations with citation counts for both conference papers and journal articles in Software Engineering and Computer Science Applications. There were negative correlations for both conference papers and journal articles in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. However, conference papers in Building and Construction Engineering attracted no Google Patent citations. This suggests that there are disciplinary differences but little overall value for Google Patent citations as impact indicators in engineering fields valuing conferences. Wikipedia citations had correlations with Scopus citations that were statistically significantly positive only in Computer Science Applications, whereas the correlations were not statistically significantly different from zero in Building & Construction Engineering, Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering and Software Engineering. Conference papers were less likely to be cited in Wikipedia than journal articles were in all fields, although the difference was minor in Software Engineering. Thus, Wikipedia citations seem to have little value in engineering fields valuing conferences. Google Books citations had positive significant correlations with Scopus-indexed citations for conference papers in all fields except Building & Construction Engineering, where the correlations were not statistically significantly different from zero. Google Books citations seemed to be most valuable impact indicators in Computer Science Applications and Software Engineering, where the correlations were moderate, than in Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering, where the correlations were low. This means that Google Book citations are valuable indicators for conference papers in engineering fields valuing conferences. Although evidence from correlation tests alone is insufficient to judge the value of alternative indicators, the results suggest that Mendeley readers and Google Books citations may be useful for both journal articles and conference papers in engineering fields that value conferences, but not Wikipedia citations or Google Patent citations.Tetfund, Nigeri