Paper-patent citation linkages as early signs for predicting delayed recognized knowledge: Macro and micro evidence

Highlights

• Paper-patent citation linkages may serve as early signs for predicting delayed recognized knowledge in science.

• Such papers may firstly encounter negative citations and then patent citations and finally get widely recognized.

• The trans-fields technological impact is important for under-cited scientific knowledge to become highly cited.

• Several trans-fields of science-technology interactions, such as “physics/mathematics - computer technology” are discovered.

• Text mining both authors’ claims and citing sentences is proposed for identifying potential transformative knowledge.

Abstract

In this study, we investigate the extent to which patent citations to papers can serve as early signs for predicting delayed recognized knowledge in science using a comparative study with a control group, i.e., instant recognition papers. We identify the two opposite groups of papers by the Bcp measure, a parameter-free index for identifying papers which were recognized with delay. We provide a macro (Science/Nature papers dataset) and micro (a case chosen from the dataset) evidence on paper-patent citation linkages as early signs for predicting delayed recognized knowledge in science. It appears that papers with delayed recognition show a stronger and longer technical impact than instant recognition papers. We provide indication that in the more recent years papers with delayed recognition are awakened more often and earlier by a patent rather than by a scientific paper (also called “prince”). We also found that patent citations seem to play an important role to avoid instant recognition papers to level off or to become a so called “flash in the pan”, i.e., instant recognition. It also appears that the sleeping beauties may firstly encounter negative citations and then patent citations and finally get widely recognized. In contrast to the two focused fields (biology and chemistry) for instant recognition papers, delayed recognition papers are rather evenly distributed in biology, chemistry, psychology, geology, materials science, and physics. We discovered several pairs of “science sleeping”-“technology inducing”, such as “biology-biotechnology/pharmaceuticals”, “chemistry-chemical engineering”, as well as some trans-fields science-technology interactions, such as “psychology - computer technology/control technology/audio-visual technology”, “physics - computer technology”, and “mathematics-computer technology”. We propose in further research to discover the potential ahead of time and transformative research by using citation delay analysis, patent & NPL analysis, and citation context analysis.