Use research (or publication) metrics when applying for a grant or promotion. Measures include citation metrics, journal quality indicators, benchmarking, altmetrics and collaboration.

5. Patent citations

Patents are recognised as a source of innovation and technical change, therefore any patent related citations to your research could be advantageous when applying for grants or promotions and to demonstrate your research impact.

Patent metrics include:

  • any patents you have
  • data about patent documents citing your publications or patents 
  • publications or non-patent literature that have cited your patents. Non-patent literature can include scholarly publications, conference proceedings, books, technical manuals, standards descriptions etc.

Find patent citations

Lens [PatCite]

  • Cited publications found in patent literature and patents that cite publications
  • Use the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) or PubMed Identifier (PMID) of a publication, or the patent identifier to discover patent related citations
  • Watch how to navigate and use PatCite (YouTube, 3m43s)

SciVal

  • Patent to publication citation data
  • Go to the Economic Impact heading to view the details
  • SciVal Patent Metrics Guidebook — guide to analysing the socio-economic impact of your work

Derwent Innovations Index

  • Patent citations for chemical, electrical, electronic and mechanical engineering
  • Perform a search with Cited Patent Search to find which patents cite an inventor or assignee
  • The results can be analysed to see who is citing the patents (Assignee Names or Inventors) and in which subject areas

Note: The assignee is the owner of a patent. When searching for assignees in List, search using abbreviations rather than whole words e.g. UNIV for university, INST for institute.

CAS SciFnder-n

  • Citing and cited patent information in the sciences
  • First time users must create a personal user name and password

Search SciFinder for patents that have cited an author's publications:

  1. Perform a search under Author Name and select the correct author
  2. Click Get References
  3. From the Get Related Citations dropdown, select Get Citing
  4. From the Refine tab, select Document Type
  5. Select Patent
  6. Click Refine.

The result list should be patents that have cited that author's articles and/or patents.

Altmetric and patent citations

The Altmetric patent data may indicate if a publication has been cited or mentioned in patents.

See the Attention and altmetrics section to find out how to find Altmetric Attention for publications.

Contact the Librarian team for expert advice.

Learn how to track and measure your own metrics with the Metrics for grant or promotion applications online tutorial.

 

  Next steps

Use metrics to provide evidence of: