International scientific and technological collaboration of China from 2004 to 2008: a perspective from paper and patent analysis

Since China adopted Open-Up and Reformed Policy for global collaboration, China’s science and technology have experienced an astounding growth. Papers and patents encompass valuable scientific and technological (S&T) information and collaborative efforts. This article studies China’s international S&T collaboration from the perspective of paper and patent analysis. The results show that China’s total papers and patents have continuously increased from 2004 to 2008, the papers and patents resulting from China’s international collaboration also present a steady growth. However, there is a decline in the share of international collaboration papers and patents with a certain range due to the rapid independent R&D. China’s international scientific collaboration (ISC) is broadly distributed over many countries, the USA being the most important ISC partners. China’s international technological collaboration (ITC) is mainly carried out with USA and Taiwan, and Taiwan has been the most significant ITC partner of when taking countries’ patent output into account. Besides, ISC shows a continuous raise of Chinese papers’ citation. Even the countries with a small amount of papers and ISC with China, exert a positive influence on the impact of citation of Chinese papers as well. However, ITC does not always play an active role in the improvement of citation impact of Chinese patents.     

An evolutionary process of global nanotechnology collaboration: a social network analysis of patents at USPTO

Using social network analysis to examine patenting data available at the USPTO, this paper explores an evolutionary process of global nanotechnology collaboration network from the perspective of entry and exit of collaborative organizations (nodes) and network’s preferential attachment process. The results show that the nanotechnology collaboration network evolved through frequent updates of the nodes and their relations (links). Compared with degree centrality and closeness centrality, betweenness centrality of an existing node was a significantly better predictor of the preferential attachment. The nodes with higher betweenness centrality were more influential to attract other nodes. This fact is observed while the network evolved. The results reveal that the core nodes with higher betweenness centrality were mostly large organizations that were equipped with core technology. They played an important broker role attracting more organizations into collaboration.     

Ontology-based neural network for patent knowledge management in design collaboration

In order to stimulate innovation during the collaborative process of new product and production development, especially to avoid duplicating existing techniques or infringing upon others’ patents and intellectual property rights, the collaborative team of research and development, and patent engineers must accurately identify relevant patent knowledge in a timely manner. This research develops a novel knowledge management approach using ontology-based artificial neural network (ANN) algorithm to automatically classify and search knowledge documents stored in huge online patent corpuses. This research focuses on developing a smart and semantic oriented classification and search from the sources of the most critical and well-structured knowledge publications, i.e. patents, to gain valuable and practical references for the collaborative networks of technology-centric product and production development teams. The research uses the domain ontology schema created using Protégé and derives the semantic concept probabilities of key phrases that frequently occur in domain relevant patent documents. Then, by combining the term frequencies and the concept probabilities of key phrases as the ANN inputs, the method shows significant improvement in classification accuracy. In addition, this research provides an advanced semantic-oriented search algorithm to accurately identify related patent documents in the patent knowledge base. The case demonstration analyses 343 chemical mechanical polishing and 150 radio-frequency identification patents sample sets to verify and measure the performance of the proposed approach. The results are compared with the previous automatic classification methods demonstrating much improved outcomes.     

Discovering and assessing fields of expertise in nanomedicine: a patent co-citation network perspective

Discovering and assessing fields of expertise in emerging technologies from patent data is not straightforward. First, patent classification in an emerging technology being far from complete, the definitions of the various applications of its inventions are embedded within communities of practice. Because patents must contain full record of prior art, co-citation networks can, in theory, be used to identify and delineate the inventive effort of these communities of practice. However, the use patent citations for the purpose of measuring technological relatedness is not obvious because they can be added by examiners. Second, the assessment of the development stage of emerging industries has been mostly done through simple patent counts. Because patents are not all valuable, a better way of evaluating an industry’s stage of development would be to use multiple patent quality metrics as well as economic activity agglomeration indicators. The purpose of this article is to validate the use of (1) patent citations as indicators of technological relatedness, and (2) multiple indicators for assessing an industry’s development stage. Greedy modularity optimization of the ‘Canadian-made’ nanotechnology patent co-citation network shows that patent citations can effectively be used as indicators of technological relatedness. Furthermore, the use of multiple patent quality and economic agglomeration indicators offers better assessment and forecasting potential than simple patent counts.     

International scientific collaboration of post-Soviet countries: a bibliometric analysis

Scientometrics - One of the major characteristics of research is the role and scope of international collaboration. Patterns of such collaboration are often complex and determined not only by pure...     

Regional development and interregional collaboration in the growth of nanotechnology research in China

China is becoming a leading nation in terms of its share of the world??s publications in the emerging nanotechnology domain. This paper demonstrates that the international rise of China??s position in nanotechnology has been underwritten by the emergence of a series of regional hubs of nanotechnology R&D activity within the country. We develop a unique database of Chinese nanotechnology articles covering the period 1990 to mid-2006 to identify the regional distribution of nanotechnology research in China. To build this database, a new approach was developed to clean and standardize the geographical allocation of Chinese publication records. We then analyze the data to understand the regional development of nanotechnology research in China over our study period and to map interregional and international research collaboration linkages. We find that the geographical distribution of China??s domestic nanotechnology research is characterized by regional imbalance, with most of the leading regions located in eastern China, including not only Beijing and Shanghai but also a series of other new regional hubs. There is much less development of nanotechnology research in central and western China. Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong are among the leading Chinese regions for international nanotechnology research collaboration. Other Chinese nanotechnology regions are less focused on international collaboration, although they have developed domestic interregional collaborations. Although new regional research hubs have emerged in the nanotechnology domain, the paper notes that their concentration in eastern China reinforces existing imbalances in science and technology capabilities in China, and in turn this may further reinforce the dominant position of eastern China in the commercialization of new technologies such as nanotechnology.     

International research collaboration in Africa: a bibliometric and thematic analysis

It is widely recognised that science in Africa will benefit from international research collaboration (IRC), and therefore studies have been done on IRC in Africa (hereafter: Africa-related IRC research). However, there is no information on the development of Africa-related IRC research, the geographical location of the scientists interested in the topic, the visibility of the literature and the themes researched. This information makes it possible to understand relevant aspects in the context of IRC in Africa, which are useful for identifying IRC strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. It also allows paving the way for future research on this topic. Using discipline–specific terms, bibliometric, and thematic analysis, I collected the literature on Africa-related IRC research indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS). The results showed that the number of publications on the topic has increased, few African countries have researched the topic, a third of the publications were written exclusively by African scientists, and the topic has high visibility. The panoply of publications revealed that patterns, driving factors, effects, networks, asymmetries, and policies concerning IRC were the main themes researched.

     

The knowledge network dynamics in a mobile ecosystem: a patent citation analysis

The paradigm of the mobile ecosystem is rapidly changing, especially since the uction of smart devices. New important players are emerging, and the scope of the mobile ecosystem is expanding and encroaching on the technological boundaries of other IT ecosystems. However, our understanding of the mobile ecosystem has been limited given the few existing studies. Therefore, in this paper, we empirically examine the network structure of a mobile ecosystem by measuring the technology knowledge flows between firms based on a patent citation analysis of the mobile industry. We found that platform providers are emerging as the center of the knowledge flow activity in the ecosystem. By introducing a new network index, the Network Concentration Index, which measures a firm’s knowledge concentration ratio toward subsectors, we also found that each platform provider shows distinctive changing patterns in their technology knowledge network and that each is forming its own sub-network with increased influence on affiliated firms.     

Patent information retrieval: approaching a method and analysing nanotechnology patent collaborations

Many challenges still remain in the processing of explicit technological knowledge documents such as patents. Given the limitations and drawbacks of the existing approaches, this research sets out to develop an improved method for searching patent databases and extracting patent information to increase the efficiency and reliability of nanotechnology patent information retrieval process and to empirically analyse patent collaboration. A tech-mining method was applied and the subsequent analysis was performed using Thomson data analyser software. The findings show that nations such as Korea and Japan are highly collaborative in sharing technological knowledge across academic and corporate organisations within their national boundaries, and China presents, in some cases, a great illustration of effective patent collaboration and co-inventorship. This study also analyses key patent strengths by country, organisation and technology.     

Influences of counting methods on country rankings: a perspective from patent analysis

The counting of patents and citations is commonly used to evaluate technological innovation and its impact. However, in an age of increasing international collaboration, the counting of international collaboration patents has become a methodological issue. This study compared country rankings using four different counting methods (i.e. whole counting, straight counting, whole-normalized counting, complete-normalized counting) in patent, citation and citation-patent ratio (CP ratio) counts. It also observed inflation depending on the method used. The counting was based on the complete 1992–2011 patent and citation data issued by United States Patent and Trademark Office. The results show that counting methods have only minor effects on country rankings in patent count, citation count and CP ratio count. All four counting methods yield reliable country ranks in technology innovation capability and impact. While the influences of counting methods vary between patent count, citation count and CP ratio count, counting methods may exert slightly greater effects on CP ratio counts than on patent and citation counts. As for the inflation, the distributions of higher and lower inflation by the four counting methods are different in patent, citation and CP ratio counts.     

Global networks of genetically modified crops technology: a patent citation network analysis

Scientometrics - This paper employs the patent data of four major genetically modified (GM) crops, soybeans, cotton, maize and rapeseed, to illustratee how the innovation of GM crop technology...     

The evolution of patent mining: Applying bibliometrics analysis and keyword network analysis

Text mining methods allow researchers to investigate technical documents (tech mining) and specifically explore patents for valuable information (patent mining. To the review literature and analyze the evolution of patent analysis and patent mining methods, bibliometrics analysis and keyword-based network analysis is applied on 143 papers extracted from the 'Web of science' database. Bibliometrics analysis was applied to determine top players researching in patent mining. Applying cluster analysis on the keyword network shows three main stages of patent analysis evolution. Also, it is discussed how patent mining is evolutionized in terms of information retrieval, pattern recognition and pattern analysis.     

The influence of European Framework Programmes on scientific collaboration in nanotechnology

This study deals primarily with the effect of certain European Framework Programmes on EU-27 member states’ publication output in nanotechnology, with a focus on their scientific collaboration over the last ten years. The study was conducted at three levels (category, journal and publication). The aim was to verify whether the newly launched category is sufficiently complete, as well as to identify the most prominent journals and compare the EU-27 member states’ output to world production. Snapshots of European networking are also provided for three key dates (2001, 2006 and 2011) to ascertain the positions of emerging and central countries and analyse their variations over time. The results confirm the speedy development in the field and the importance of the EU-27s world role. They corroborate the close correlation between funding and increased output and the intensification of collaboration among member states. Finally, the information contained in the “Funding Agency” field in the Web of Science database was also compiled, with a view to substantiating the validity of the estimated impact of EU-funding programmes on member states’ scientific output.     

Structure of a patent transaction network

Firms participating in a patent transaction network demonstrate interdependence and mutually influence one another. The characteristics of such a network structure demonstrate a complex overall configuration. This study proposes a dynamic perspective for investigating the structure of a patent transaction network. By using network analysis, this study defines the structural configuration of a patent transaction network by measuring centralization, centrality, and linkage distribution. Data from patent transactions of the flat panel display sector from 1976 to 2012 have been examined evaluate their networking. The results show that the structural configuration of a patent transaction network shows significant stratification patterns in terms of a given firm’s technology exportation and brokerage capabilities, but also operates as a complex system. This analysis provides insights into patent transaction networks, and also addresses policy implications for firms and authorities who are interested in acquiring market competition or governance.     

International collaboration in scientific research in Vietnam: an analysis of patterns and impact

Scientometrics - The present study sought to examine the trend and impact of international collaboration in scientific research in Vietnam during the period after the introduction of the a reform...     

Inequality and collaboration patterns in Canadian nanotechnology: implications for pro-poor and gender-inclusive policy

Policymakers and scholars are increasingly concerned with how nanotechnology can reduce inequalities and provide benefits for disadvantaged and poor communities. This paper simultaneously addresses two concerns related to nanotechnology and equity: the lack of research and development focused on nanotechnology applications that benefit developing nations (pro-poor R&D) and the lack of women in nanotechnology fields. The paper focuses on Canada, an affluent country committed to both pro-poor and gender responsive policies. Social network analysis is used to examine the relationship between gender and collaboration patterns of authors and inventors whose work is related to pro-poor applications of nanotechnology. Findings reveal that female first-authored papers have a lower citation rate and are published in higher ranked journals compared to those papers first-authored by men. Nevertheless, when women are last or corresponding authors, their papers receive equal or higher citation rates and are published in lower or similar ranked journals. Women are as, or more, collaborative as their male peers in their co-authorship and co-inventorship networks. While the majority of male authors and male inventors collaborate exclusively with men, those involved in a mixed-gender team outperform male-only teams. Women, as both authors and inventors, are involved in more gender-balanced collaboration teams. The study calls for development and implementation of gender-related policies in Canada to increase the prevalence of female scientists in collaboration networks, and to support the participation of women in pro-poor areas.     

International patent data: Their utilization for the analysis of technological developments

The analysis of technological developments for purposes like technological forecasting through the use of leading indicators or ex post evaluation of science and technology oriented policies, nearly always lead to the evaluation of patent statistics.From these the authors established indicators of technological development using numbers of patents applied for or granted worldwide, thus preventing sampling and weighting errors. Account was taken of the effect of patent families as well as connections between technological developments in different fields. Furthermore, methods were established to identify areas with important technological developments.The final part of the paper shows the first results of application of these methods to the comparison of international patenting activities in selected fields.