Patent citation analysis: Calculating science linkage based on citing motivation

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 to examiners. In order to identify and ultimately reduce this noise, we analyzed the different citing motivations of examiners and inventors. We built four 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 conducted an exploratory science linkage calculation in the domain of catalyst from US patent data (2006-2009), based on three types of citations: self-citation by inventor, non-self-citation by inventor, and citation by examiner. According to our results, evaluated domain experts, we conclude that the non-self-citation by inventor is quite noisy and cannot indicate science linkage and that self-citation by inventor, although limited, is more appropriate for understanding science linkage.