Earlier this week Björn Hammarfelt’s first paper in the PASSIM-project was published in Journal of Documention. The article titled “Linking science to technology: the patent paper citation and the rise of patentometrics in the 1980s” can be described as a conceptual history of the “patent paper citation.” The study analyses how a further interest for patents as scientific documents from several domains, including research policy, bibliometrics and the sociology of science was evident during the 1980s. In many ways the patent was treated as just another document containing scientific information, and the patent citation was viewed as readily available indicator for answering key questions in contemporarydeliberations on the role of scientific research in relation to technological development. In representing these links, patents, and patent citations, became a common point of reference which allowed for measurement and comparison of entities that otherwise appear as separate and non-calculable. The paper concludes by arguing for a broader more reflexive understanding of references in patents, including their social, legal and rhetorical function.
The full text can be accessed here: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JD-12-2020-0218/full/html