Comparing patent in-text and front-page references to science

Abstract

Patent references to science provide a paper trail of knowledge flow from science to innovation, and have attracted a lot of attention in recent years. However, we understand little about the differences between two types of patents references: front-page vs. in-text. While both types of references are becoming more accessible, we still lack a systematic understanding on how results are sensitive to which type of references are being analyzed in science and innovation studies. Using a dataset of 33,337 USPTO biotech utility patents, their 860,879 in-text and 637,570 front-page references to Web of Science journal articles, we found a remarkable low overlap between these two types of references. We also found that in-text references are more basic and have more scientific citations than front-page references. The difference in interdisciplinarity and novelty is small when comparing at the reference level and insignificant when comparing at the patent level. We analyze the association between patent value (as measured by patent citations and market value) and characteristics of referenced sciences. Results are substantially different between in-text and front-page references. In addition, in-text referenced papers have a higher chance of being listed on the front-page of the same patent when they are moderately basic, less interdisciplinary, less novel, and have more scientific citations.