Patent citation analysis: Calculating science linkage based on citing motivation

Abstract

Science linkage is a widely used patent bibliometric indicator to measure patent linkage to scientific research based on the frequency of citations to scientific papers within the patent. Science linkage is also regarded as noisy because the subject of patent citation behavior varies from inventors/applicants to examiners. In order to identify and ultimately reduce this noise, we analyzed the different citing motivations of examiners and inventors/applicants. We built 4 hypotheses based upon our study of patent law, the unique economic nature of a patent, and a patent citation's market effect. To test our hypotheses, we conducted an expert survey based on our science linkage calculation in the domain of catalyst from U.S. patent data (2006–2009) over 3 types of citations: self‐citation by inventor/applicant, non‐self‐citation by inventor/applicant, and citation by examiner. According to our results, evaluated by domain experts, we conclude that the non‐self‐citation by inventor/applicant is quite noisy and cannot indicate science linkage and that self‐citation by inventor/applicant, although limited, is more appropriate for understanding science linkage.