QUT researchers report progress on their immense innovation cartography project. Last year CMM reported Richard Jefferson and colleagues have created an open access search site that can search 100m patents for references to academic work in them, (CMM August 11 2017). And now Osmat A Jefferson, with Australian, UK and US colleagues, details how research tools using citations in patents can find research connections. Inevitably they rank institutions according to research citations in patents but this is much less of a deal than what their innovation cartography can show for researchers and developers looking for partners.

“The route to economic and social impact from public research is complex, dynamic, risky and often unclear. Choosing the right partners and pathways is critically important, and requires mining metadata and knowledge from diverse corpora, including but not limited to science and technology scholarship and patents. Knowing which individuals and institutions are or could be actors in this journey, as well as what knowledge, capabilities and rights they may control, is essential. Similarly, surfacing and exposing potential incentives will provide the glue to hold such alliances in place. “ Professor Jefferson and her team write.