4 research outputs found
Sleeping Beauties Cited in Patents: Is there also a Dormitory of Inventions?
A Sleeping Beauty in Science is a publication that goes unnoticed (sleeps)
for a long time and then, almost suddenly, attracts a lot of attention (is
awakened by a prince). In our foregoing study we found that roughly half of the
Sleeping Beauties are application-oriented and thus are potential Sleeping
Innovations. In this paper we investigate a new topic: Sleeping Beauties that
are cited in patents. In this way we explore the existence of a dormitory of
inventions. We find that patent citation may occur before or after the
awakening and that the depth of the sleep, i.e., citation rate during the
sleeping period, is no predictor for later scientific or technological impact
of the Sleeping Beauty. Inventor-author self-citations occur only in a small
minority of the Sleeping Beauties that are cited in patents, but other types of
inventor-author links occur more frequently. We analyze whether they deal with
new topics by measuring the time-dependent evolution in the entire scientific
literature of the number of papers related to both the precisely defined topics
as well as the broader research theme of the Sleeping Beauty during and after
the sleeping time. We focus on the awakening by analyzing the first group of
papers that cites the Sleeping Beauty. Next, we create concept maps of the
topic-related and the citing papers for a time period immediately following the
awakening and for the most recent period. Finally, we make an extensive
assessment of the cited and citing relations of the Sleeping Beauty. We find
that tunable co-citation analysis is a powerful tool to discover the prince and
other important application-oriented work directly related to the Sleeping
Beauty, for instance papers written by authors who cite Sleeping Beauties in
both the patents of which they are the inventors, as well as in their
scientific papers.Comment: 30 pages, 17 figure
Sleeping beauties cited in patents: is there also a dormitory of inventions?
A ‘Sleeping Beauty in Science’ is a
publication that goes unnoticed (‘sleeps’) for a long time and then, almost suddenly,
attracts a lot of attention (‘is awakened by a prince’). In our foregoing study we
found that roughly half of the Sleeping Beauties are application-oriented and thus are
potential Sleeping Innovations. In this paper we investigate a new topic:
Sleeping Beauties that are cited in patents. In this way we explore the existence
of a dormitory of inventions. To our knowledge this is the first study of this
kind. We investigate the time lag between publication of the Sleeping Beauty
and the first citation by a patent. We find that patent citation may occur
before or after the awakening and that the depth of the sleep, i.e., citation
rate during the sleeping period, is no predictor for later scientific or
technological impact of the Sleeping Beauty. A surprising finding is that
Sleeping Beauties are significantly more cited in patents than ‘normal’ papers.
Inventor–author self-citations relations occur only in a small minority of the
Sleeping Beauties that are cited in patents, but other types of inventor–author
links occur more frequently. We develop an approach in different steps to
explore the cognitive environment of Sleeping Beauties cited in patents. First,
we analyze whether they deal with new topics by measuring the time-dependent
evolution in the entire scientific literature of the number of papers related
to both the precisely defined topics as well as the broader research theme of
the Sleeping Beauty during and after the sleeping time. Second, we focus on the
awakening by analyzing the first group of papers that cites the Sleeping
Beauty. Third, we create concept maps of the topic-related and the citing
papers for a time period immediately following the awakening and for the most
recent period. Finally, we make an extensive assessment of the cited and citing
relations of the Sleeping Beauty. We find that tunable co-citation analysis is
a powerful tool to discover the prince(s) and other important application-oriented
work directly related to the Sleeping Beauty, for instance papers written by
authors who cite Sleeping Beauties in both the patents of which they are the inventors,
as well as in their scientific papers.
Merit, Expertise and Measuremen