Comparing scientific and technological impact of biomedical research

TL;DR

This study compares the scientific and technological impact of biomedical research papers by analyzing citation patterns from academic papers and patents, revealing distinct temporal dynamics and limited overlap in influential works.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of how biomedical papers are cited differently in scientific and technological domains, highlighting the lag and divergence between the two impact measures.

Findings

Positive correlation between paper and patent citations

Limited overlap in highly cited papers across domains

Patent citations lag behind paper citations by median of 6 years

Abstract

Traditionally, the number of citations that a scholarly paper receives from other papers is used as the proxy of its scientific impact. Yet citations can come from domains outside the scientific community, and one such example is through patented technologies---paper can be cited by patents, achieving technological impact. While the scientific impact of papers has been extensively studied, the technological aspect remains less known in the literature. Here we aim to fill this gap by presenting a comparative study on how 919 thousand biomedical papers are cited by U.S. patents and by other papers over time. We observe a positive correlation between citations from patents and from papers, but there is little overlap between the two domains in either the most cited papers, or papers with the most delayed recognition. We also find that the two types of citations exhibit distinct temporal variations, with patent citations lagging behind paper citations for a median of 6 years for the majority of papers. Our work contributes to the understanding of the technological impact of papers.