Commonalities and differences between scholarly and technical collaboration

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Co-authorship analysis is a well-established tool in bibliometric analysis. It can be used at various levels to trace collaborative links between individuals, organisations, or countries. Increasingly, informetric methods are applied to patent data. It has been shown for another method that bibliometric tools cannot be applied without difficulty. This is due to the different process in which a patent is filed, examined, and granted and a scientific paper is submitted, refereed and published. However, in spite of the differences, there are also parallels between scholarly papers and patents. For instance, both papers and patents are the result of an intellectual effort, both disclose relevant information, and both are subject to a process of examination. Given the similarities, we shall raise the question as to which extent one can transfer co-authorship analysis to patent data.