The ALBA Synchrotron Light Source, located near Barcelona, Spain, is a research infrastructure supporting scientific and industrial applications in fields including life sciences, materials science, chemistry and nanotechnology.
ALBA commissioned CSIL to update and expand a patent citation analysis originally conducted in 2020 under the Horizon 2020 RiPaths project. The study aimed to trace how scientific knowledge generated through ALBA research contributes to technological development, using patent citations as evidence of knowledge transfer from science to innovation.
CSIL developed and applied a methodology combining bibliometric analysis, patent citation analysis and text mining to identify links between ALBA's scientific publications and subsequent patent documents. Building on the 2020 methodological framework, the analysis examined both direct citations, where patents explicitly reference ALBA publications, and indirect citations, where patents reference scientific publications that themselves cite ALBA research. The updated study also extended the analysis to patent full texts to identify additional references to ALBA and its experimental facilities.
CSIL combined ALBA's repository of 3,394 scientific publications with patent information from specialised databases, including Lens and Orbis IP. The analysis mapped the technological fields associated with patent citations, examined the time elapsed between scientific publication and patent development, and explored the contribution of different research areas and experimental beamlines.