Scientific publications and patenting by companies : a study of the whole population of Canadian firms over 25 years

Abstract

There is evidence in the literature that technological inventions have an increasing connection to scientific knowledge. This raises two related questions: (1) Are firms increasingly conducting scientific basic research? (2) Is being at the scientific forefront helping firms to be closer to the technological frontier? This paper examines scientific output, as measured by numbers of papers, and technological output, as measured by patents granted to all Canadian firms, during the 1980 to 2005 period. Though the number of firms publishing papers and obtaining patents is increasing, scientific research and patenting by Canadian firms are at near ‘homeopathic’ levels. Firms that both publish papers and obtain patents (1) perform research that is more basic than firms that only publish scientific papers; (2) publish in more highly cited journals than firms that only perform scientific research; (3) publish papers that are more highly cited; and 4) hold patents that are more frequently cited.