Indicators for measuring the impact of scientific citations in patents

Abstract

Scientific publications cited in patents are fundamental elements to assess the transfer of science to technology. Numerous studies evaluate the impact of references in patents and scientific publications and various measurement methods and indicators are proposed. This article reviewed the existing literature on the indicators used to date to determine their suitability and effectiveness to evaluate the impact of patent citations. For this purpose, we analyzed the characteristics of the studies examined and proposed a qualitative classification of indicators from both a technological (patents) and scientific-academic (scientific articles) perspective. Among the results we find that the use of scientometric indicators is primarily focused on analyzing their relevance for patents through the inclusion of scientific citations. Conversely, the same is not true from the academic point of view where gaps still persist in terms of what the impact is when scientific articles are cited in patents. Among the key conclusions is the diversity of proposals to measure scientific citations in patents, though these are conditioned on bibliographic standardization and metadata management of the patents themselves, making it possible to quantify aspects similar to the immediacy index, impact index, or h-index for authors/inventors, albeit from a technological dimension.