Impact of Public Funding on the Development of Nanotechnology : A Comparison of Quebec, Canada and the US

RÉSUMÉ : La nanotechnologie est la haute technologie la plus prometteuse de ce siècle. L’investissement mondial dans cette technologie a augmenté rapidement dans les deux dernières décennies. En outre, cet investissement va probablement contribuer de façon non négligeable à la croissance économique future. La recherche dans cette nouvelle technologie basée sur la science nécessite un financement public important pour faciliter la production de connaissances, réduire les incertitudes et les risques connexes, et assurer le succès du développement de la nanotechnologie. Compte tenu de son potentiel dans une large variété de domaines, les gouvernements et les décideurs politiques ont cherché à allouer efficacement des fonds, afin de maximiser les avantages économiques. Il est donc essentiel d’améliorer et d’approfondir notre compréhension concernant la façon dont les financements publics pourront influencer la performance de la recherche. Le but principal de cette thèse consiste à analyser l’impact du financement public sur le développement de la nanotechnologie, avec un accent tout particulier sur les résultats de la recherche scientifique et technologique. Les objectifs de la recherche portent sur deux volets : Tout d’abord, nous cherchons à examiner l’influence du financement. Le deuxième volet consiste à explorer l’impact de la collaboration et des réseaux innovants sur le développement de la nanotechnologie. Ensuite, notre but est de comparer l’impact du financement et des réseaux de collaboration de nanotechnologie entre le Canada et les États-Unis. Cette recherche porte sur les extrants importants de la recherche académique : les publications et les brevets. Elle permet de caractériser les réseaux de collaboration en utilisant les liens de co-publication et de co-invention entre les scientifiques et les inventeurs. Cette thèse contribue de manière significative aux questions de recherche suivantes : Comment l’augmentation du financement public pour les scientifiques œuvrant en nanotechnologie peut améliorer les publications et les brevets liés aux nanotechnologies en terme de nombre (a) et en terme de qualité (b)? Est-ce que les chercheurs qui détiennent une position plus influente au sein des réseaux de co-publication/co-invention sont plus productifs et plus cités? Est-ce que l’influence du financement public sur les recherches en nanotechnologie est différente au Canada par rapport aux États-Unis? Pour répondre à ces questions, des informations sur les articles de nanotechnologie, les brevets et le financement ont été extraites à partir de diverses bases de données au Canada et aux États-Unis. De plus, cette information a été utilisée pour construire les réseaux scientifiques et technologiques, et pour analyser l’influence du financement par des analyses économétriques. En ce qui concerne la première question de recherche, nos résultats montrent que le financement public fait augmenter généralement le nombre et la qualité des publications et brevets. Toutefois, cet impact positif est plus important aux États-Unis. Le financement est également moins susceptible d’influencer les brevets de nanotechnologie au Canada. En ce qui concerne l’analyse du financement de l’industrie au Québec, les fonds privés sont moins susceptibles de faire augmenter la qualité des publications. Quant à notre deuxième question de recherche, les études montrent que les résultats scientifiques et technologiques sont en corrélation avec la position des chercheurs dans les réseaux de collaboration. Les résultats de la recherche en nanotechnologie, particulièrement au Canada, montrent que le rendement est plus élevé au niveau des publications, des brevets et des réseaux de collaboration. Enfin, bien que l’impact entre le Canada et les États-Unis soit légèrement différent, cette recherche suggère que le financement et les réseaux de collaboration jouent un rôle important dans la stimulation de la quantité ainsi que de la qualité de la recherche académique.----------ABSTRACT : Nanotechnology is considered to be the most promising high technology of this century. Worldwide investment in this technology has rapidly increased in the past two decades, and it will likely drive future economic growth. Research in this new science-based technology requires significant public funding to facilitate knowledge production, reduce related uncertainties and risks, and ensure the success of nanotechnology development. Given its potential in a wide range of domains, governments and policymakers have sought to efficiently allocate funding to maximize economic benefits. It is therefore essential to further our understanding of how public funding influences research performance. The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze the impact of public funding on nanotechnology development, with a special focus on scientific and technological research outputs. The research objectives are twofold: we first seek to examine this funding influence, and second to explore the impact of collaboration and related scientific and innovative networks on nanotechnology development. Afterwards, our goal is to compare the impact of funding and of nanotechnology collaborative networks between Canada and the US on scientific and technological research outputs. This research deals with the prominent outputs of academic research, publications and patents, and characterizes collaborative networks using the co-publication and co-invention links between scientists and inventors. This thesis contributes significantly to the following research questions: how increased public funding to nanotechnology scientists enhances nanotechnology-related publications and patents in terms of (a) number and (b) quality? Are researchers who hold a more influential network position in co-publication/co-invention networks more productive and more cited? Is the influence of public funding on nanotechnology research different in Canada compared with the US? To answer these questions, information about nanotechnology articles, patents and funding was extracted from various databases in Canada and in the US and was used to build the scientific and innovation networks, and to analyze the influence of funding by econometric analyses. Regarding the first research question, our results show that public funding generally increases the number and quality of these outputs. However, this positive impact is more significant in the US and funding is less likely to influence nanotechnology patents in Canada. Regarding the analysis of industry funding in Quebec, private funds are less likely to increase the quality of publications. Concerning our second research question, results show that scientific and technological outputs are correlated with the position of researchers in collaborative networks. Nanotechnology research outputs particularly in Canada show greater returns on publications and patents on network collaborations. Finally, although the impacts are somewhat different between Canada and the US, this research suggests that both funding and collaborative networks play an important role in boosting the quantity and quality of academic research

Does government funding have the same impact on academic publications and patents? The case of nanotechnology in Canada

University patenting has become an important research outcome in the past few decades. There has been an increase in the number of faculty patents and individual scientists listed as inventors on patent applications. The effective allocation of funding to universities is of great concern to policymakers. In this paper, we evaluate whether an increase in government funding for academic scientists enhances the performance of researchers in both scientific publications and academic patents or if this merely increases publications in the academic realm. We provide summary statistics from nanotechnology data in Quebec, compare it with other provinces in Canada, and build econometric models of various publication, patenting and grant databases. The analysis illustrates the strong relationship between funding and publication productivity as well as the citation impact of publications. In the light of research performance in patenting activities of academic researchers, this empirical study finds a strong influence on the number of patents. Moreover, increased funding appears to strengthen the citation impact of patents in Quebec, which affects the citation impact of patenting activities

The role of public funding in nanotechnology scientific production: Where Canada stands in comparison to the United States

This paper presents cross-country comparisons between Canada and the United States in terms of the impact of public grants and scientific collaborations on subsequent nanotechnology-related publications. In this study we present the varying involvement of academic researchers and government funding to capture the influence of funded research in order to help government agencies evaluate their efficiency in financing nanotechnology research. We analyze the measures of quantity and quality of research output using time-related econometric models and compare the results between nanotechnology scientists in Canada and the United States. The results reveal that both research grants and the position of researchers in co-publication networks have a positive influence on scientific output. Our findings demonstrate that research funding yields a significantly positive linear impact in Canada and a positive non-linear impact in the United States on the number of papers and in terms of the number of citations we observe a positive impact only in the US. Our research shows that the position of scientists in past scientific networks plays an important role in the quantity and quality of papers published by nanotechnology scientists

Do patents of academic funded researchers enjoy a longer life? A study of patent renewal decisions.

This paper assesses the extent to which patent renewal data is associated with government funding in a university context by focusing on the relationship between the funded patentees and renewal decisions of their patents. The aim of this paper is to show whether receiving funding from government contributes to high-value patents as measured by the patent renewal decisions made by their owners. Our observations of academic nanotechnology patents in Canada discovered a positive relationship between funded researchers and the rate of patent renewal after 4 years. Further analysis is also undertaken into the relative impact on patent renewal after 8 years and 12 years. Our results suggest that the length of patent renewal in numbers of years can be related to levels of government funding received by their inventors