Indicators of thematic science-technology linkages: from text to numbers

The article describes the principal stages of calculation of indicators for thematic science-technology linkages. Source data for carrying out calculations are results of processing of full-text descriptions of inventions in natural language. The purpose of processing is extracting information about scientific publications cited in full-text descriptions of inventions. Comparing this information with indexes of the International Patent Classification helps experts to reveal science-technology linkages and to estimate them by means of quantitative indicators. In the article, the technological stages of calculating indicators for linkage assessment on which transition from text processing to numerical calculations is carried out are investigated. The article describes the techniques developed for extracting information about scientific publications from full-text descriptions of inventions and calculating indicator values. These techniques helped to define indicators of science-technology linkages for information technology research fields, which were patented in the Russian Federation in 2000–2012. For the domestic scientific and technical sphere, these indicators were calculated for the first time.