Technology footprints in scientific discovery: Citation contexts of paper-to-patent citations

Citations between papers and patents indicate knowledge transfer between science and technology. This study discusses the function of paper-to-patent citations through citation contexts. 7,223 articles having at least one paper-to-patent citation are identified from a collection of 2.4 million PubMed Central open access articles. Within 429,698 references cited by the 7,223 articles, 11,165 (2.6%) are paper-to-patent citations, while 418,533 (97.4%) are paper-to-paper citations. In comparison to paper-to-paper citations, paper-to-patent citations were more concentrated at the beginning of articles. Higher proportions of patents are cited in the introduction and methods sections and are only cited once. The results indicate that patents are likely to be cited for providing background knowledge. The appearance of paper-to-patent citations in the method sections implies that patents might also contribute to the development of research methods.