Scientometrics
Mostafa Rostami; Faramarz soheili; Ali Akbar Khasseh
Abstract
Background and Objectives: The increasing importance of science and technology in contemporary societies and their impact on human life has caused the relationship between these two elements to be analyzed from different perspectives. This study investigates the relationship between science and technology ...
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Background and Objectives: The increasing importance of science and technology in contemporary societies and their impact on human life has caused the relationship between these two elements to be analyzed from different perspectives. This study investigates the relationship between science and technology in the field of knowledge discovery using citation analysis of patents during 1995-2014.
Methodology: This is an applied research which has been conducted using citation analysis method. The relationship between science and technology has been investigated using the indicators established in the two mentioned areas. For this purpose, we referred to the USPTO database and in the first stage, the field of Data Processing was searched. In the next step, the subject category of the data processing domain was analyzed and the subject category of knowledge discovery was identified and provided to the subject experts. After reviewing and analyzing the subject headings, they selected category 603 under the subject of Data Processing as the main category in the field of knowledge discovery. In the next step, the Current US Classification (CCL) was used to retrieve all related permissions and to avoid false dropout and search results error. All patents related to the subject of knowledge discovery (subject category 603), data processing area, including 304 patents were recalled from the earliest year of registration (1995) to the last year of registration (2014).
In the next step, bibliographic information on the first page of patents was used for citation analysis. This information is categorized into three sections named U.S. Patent Documents, Foreign Patent Documents, and Other References. The data was extracted manually from the text file and entered into Microsoft Excel 2013, and then the relationships (formulas) were coded and executed in Excel.
Geometric average formula was used to calculate the growth rate of citations. Narin (2000) proposed formula was used to study and evaluate the relationship between science and technology. The science index calculates the average number of citations to scientific articles in a patent. Scientific power indicates the degree of participation of scientific knowledge in the technical field. The technical power measurement is used to calculate the amount of technology used in the patents. Technical strength is a measure of the qualitative weight of a patent.
The statistical population of this research includes 304 patents in the subcategory of knowledge discovery and registered in the US Patent and Trademark Database, which was registered in this database from 1995 to 2014. By referring to the USPTO database and searching for knowledge discovery, the category of related topics was examined and finally category number 603 was selected to study the relationship between science and technology in the field of knowledge discovery. Uspto2.exe, Aostsoft All Document, and Excel software were used to extract and analyze the data. Ravar PreMap software was used to calculate the frequency and Excel program was used to calculate the growth trend of patents, growth rate of citations and drawing statistical graphs.
Findings: Findings showed that the patents in the field of knowledge discovery during the research period have a growing trend of 30.07%. In other words, an average of 15.2 patents has been registered each year. The calculation of the growth rate of citing patents in the field of knowledge discovery using the geometric average shows 62.59% growth for a period of twenty years. Calculating the rate of citation to US patents using geometric averages shows a growth of 72.8%. Moreover, calculating the growth rate of citation to non-US patents based on geometric averages shows 87.2% growth. In this study, the link with science in the field of knowledge discovery was .3549. The closer the number of links with science is to 1, the stronger the scientific link is, and the closer it is to zero, the weaker the scientific link. In other words, the higher the citation of non-patent documents to the patents, the more it indicates that the invention in question has been produced based on research and scientific and academic theories. Scientific power in the field of knowledge discovery for the studied years was 10788.96 units, which indicates the influence of scientific documents in the patents of this field. In this research, the technical strength of the field of knowledge discovery is equal to 1967.52 units. The highest technical power (34.947) is related to 2011 and the lowest technical power (0.857) is related to 1995.
Discussion: The number of patents in the field of knowledge discovery at the USPTO database has grown by 30.07% in recent decades, with an average of 15.2 patents per year. These results show that the growth rate of patents has had ups and downs between these years. But further studies show that overall this growth has been accompanied by an upward slope; The highest number of patents was registered between 2008 and 2011. This growth has coincided with the growth of the global economy. The reason for this leap has been the need for global markets and free trade, which has led scientists, engineers and inventors to seek a share of the emerging market for emerging technologies. The results of this study showed that the rate of connection with science and its effect in the field of knowledge discovery is 35.49%. Considering the technical background in the field of knowledge discovery, this level of science participation in this field and its increase in the final years of the research period, indicates the growth of scientific research in line with technology and commercialization of scientific products of academic and industrial centers.
