DAT: Creating a Patent Collaboration Network Database to Examine the Social Production of Knowledge

尽管有证据表明创新已经变得越来越协作，但我们对协作创造力及其对经济生产力的影响的理解仍然不完整。例如，考虑到促进新想法产生的网络似乎也阻碍了新想法的传播，企业应该如何组织其发明者的合作？知识如何在区域内和区域之间流动？政策制定者如何影响这些流动以获得最大的社会福利？对科学研究的投资如何产生同行评议的出版物、知识的传播、发明和专利，以及经济生产力的最终收益？这些问题仍然没有答案，因为社交网络数据很难收集，尤其是跨越时间、空间和边界的数据。这个提案可以通过计算和发布数以百万计的关系数据来回答这些问题，这些数据基于从1963年到现在美国专利发明者之间的所有共同作者关系。该数据库通过提供专利共同作者的社会网络来补充国家经济研究局（NBER）的专利数据库。它在个体发明人和包括组织、地区和技术在内的总体水平上创建了一个标准的社会网络专利数据库。它降低了那些缺乏必要的编程技能和硬件来自己创建数据的学者的进入门槛，并使专利合作网络的实时绘图成为可能。它提供了一个网站，通过这个网站，真正的发明者可以评估用于在专利数据库中唯一识别他们的算法的准确性。最后，该项目在一个公共网站上提供数据，供学者、商业分析师和学生访问。正如最初的国家经济研究局数据库释放了广泛而多样的创新学术（根据b谷歌Scholar，到2008年初，超过500篇论文引用了它），社会网络数据库项目将释放类似的研究浪潮，重点放在协作创造力和发明者及其组织的社会网络上。更广泛的影响：该研究将公布所有美国专利合作作者（1963年至今）的社交网络数据，供研究人员、学生和商业分析师使用。它将提供实时的能力，直观地说明这些网络，通过节点的颜色和大小以及共同作者链接来说明各种变量。这将有助于回答管理者应该如何构建协作关系，以及信息如何跨组织、区域和技术边界流动。它将使追踪世界各地数百万发明家的职业生产力和流动性成为可能。它将与关于研究经费和科学出版物的其他数据库一起，阐明从个人到组织和国际的许多分析层次上的知识创造和传播过程。该项目的主要目的是使社会网络数据，基于从1963年到现在的美国专利的共同作者，可供研究人员和广大公众使用。在项目启动的六个月内，该计划将使来自哈佛麻省理工学院数据中心的数据可用。这些数据也将被保存在Henry A. Murray研究档案中。原始数据和源代码将包含在这些帖子中。

Despite evidence that innovation has become increasingly collaborative, our understanding of collaborative creativity and its impact on economic productivity remains incomplete. For example, how should firms structure the collaborations of their inventors, given that networks which enhance the generation of a new idea also appear to hamper the dissemination of that idea? How does knowledge flow within and between regions and how can policy makers influence those flows for maximal social welfare? How does investment in scientific research result in peer-reviewed publication, the diffusion of knowledge, invention, and patenting, and ultimate gains in economic productivity? These questions remain unanswered because social network data are difficult to gather, particularly across time, space, and boundaries. This proposal allows answering these questions by calculating and posting millions of relational data, based on all co-authorship ties between inventors of U.S. patents, from 1963 through the present.The database complements the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) patent database by providing the social networks of patent co-authorships. It creates a standard social network patent database at the individual inventor and aggregate levels including organizational, regional, and technological. It reduces barriers to entry to scholars who lack the requisite programming skills and hardware to create the data on their own and enables real time graphing of patent co-authorship networks. It provides a website by which actual inventors can assess the accuracy of the algorithms used to uniquely identify them in the patent database. Finally, the project provides data on a public website accessible by scholars, business analysts, and students. Just as the original NBER database has unleashed broad and diverse scholarship on innovation (over 500 papers cite it, according to Google Scholar, by early 2008), the social network database project will unleash a similar wave of research, focused on collaborative creativity and the social networks of inventors and their organizations.Broader Impacts: The research will publish social network data from all U.S. patent co-authorships (1963-present) for use by researchers, students, and business analysts. It will provide real-time ability to visually illustrate these networks, with a variety of variables illustrated by color and size of the nodes and co-authorship links. It will enable answering how managers should structure collaborative relationships and how information flows across organizational, regional, and technological boundaries. It will enable tracing the career productivity and mobility of millions of inventors around the world. In conjunction with other databases on research grants and scientific publication, it will illuminate the process of knowledge creation and dissemination at many levels of analysis, from the individual, to the organizational, and international.The primary purpose of this project is to make social network data, based on the co-authorship of U.S. patents from 1963 through the present, available to researchers and the public at large. The plan, within six months of project start, is to make the data available from the Harvard MIT Data Center. The data will also be archived in the Henry A. Murray Research Archive. Raw data and the source code will be included in these postings.