Are co-active inventors on top of their class? An exploratory comparison of inventor-authors with their non-inventing peers in nano-science and technology

This paper explores the relationship between scientific publication and patenting activity. More specifically, this research examines for the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology whether researchers who both publish and patent are more productive and more highly cited than their peers who concentrate on scholarly publication in communicating their research results. This study is based on an analysis of the nanoscience publications and nanotechnology patents of a small set of European countries. While only a very small number of nanoscientists appear to hold patents in nanotechnology, a considerable number of nano-inventors seem to be actively publishing nanoscience research. Overall, the patenting scientists appear to outperform their solely publishing, non-inventing peers in terms of publication counts and citation frequency. However, a closer examination of the highly active and cited nano-authors points to a slightly different situation. While still over-represented among the highly cited authors, inventor-authors appear not to be among the most highly cited authors in that category with one notable exception. A policy-relevant conclusion is that, generally speaking, patenting activity does not appear to have an adverse impact on the publication and citation performance of researchers.