The transition cycle measurement to estimate how science impels innovation: A publication-citation analysis of biotech patents

Non-patent literature citation has been considered an indicator to measure the contribution of the scientific research to the technological innovation in many science-based technology fields because they are closely related to the original inspiration and theoretical basis of the patent application. This study intended to examine the support of scientific research for technological innovation from the perspective of non-patent citations and measured the average period of transition from research to innovation based on the difference between the patent application year and the average published year of the cited publications. The sample data in US patent grants applied in 2014 and the empirical analysis data in 2015-2017 in biotech field were thoroughly examined in this work. We figured out figured out the difference between the patent application year to the average published year of the cited papers is 6.2, which means that the scientific research published in the second half of 2007 effectively supported the technological innovation in 2014 with a transition cycle of 6.2 years. And we found that the similar characteristics were shown in the medical/therapeutic and industrial biotechnology sub-field with a transition cycle from research to innovation of 6.1 years and 6.7 years in 2015-2017, and in the case of agricultural biotechnology 11.9 years.