Corporate scientific publications as complementary information for patent analytics: Publication flow, publication stock, and firm-level patent outcomes in China

Corporate scientific publications as complementary information for patent analytics: Publication flow, publication stock, and firm-level patent outcomes in China

Journal article

1 volume.

Patent data are central to firm-level innovation and IP analysis, but patent counts and citations only partially capture the scientific activity behind patenting. This paper asks whether corporate scientific publication records can complement patent information in patent analytics. It distinguishes publication flow, an indicator of recent publication activity, from publication stock, an indicator of accumulated scientific participation, and separates recent flow into indexed and non-indexed domestic journal channels. Using 25,616 firm-year observations for 4944 Chinese listed firms, the analysis links publication records from China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), patent data from CNRDS, and financial information from Wind and CSMAR, and estimates Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) and fixed-effects models with firm and industry-by-year fixed effects. Publication flow is associated mainly with subsequent patent quantity, whereas publication stock is more consistently associated with utility model applications and portfolio-level patent citation impact. Non-indexed publication flow shows a stronger association with patent quantity than indexed publication flow. A formal benchmark comparison shows that the analytical value of this decomposition is conditional rather than universal: the decomposed measures add information beyond an aggregate publication count mainly for citation-based patent impact, whereas for utility model counts an aggregate measure performs comparably. The stock results are robust to depreciation-based stock construction and excluding jointly filed applications, and are stable across China's 2021 patent-regulation tightening. The findings support fit-for-purpose use of corporate publication records in patent analytics: publication indicators should be matched to the patent outcome of interest rather than treated as a single scalar proxy.

Crossref

World Patent Information ; 86, September, 2026

World Patent Information

Oxford [England] : Elsevier Ltd., 2026.

English

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0172219023000108

External Online Journals > World Patent Information