Title: Patent and publication productivity of German professors – a life cycle view

Authors: Sidonia Von Proff

Addresses: Philipps-Universitat Marburg, Fachbereich Geographie, Deutschhausstrasse 10, 35032 Marburg, Germany

Abstract: The increasing focus on academic patenting raises questions about patent incentives at different stages of the scientific career and the resulting patent productivity. The paper at hand compares the incentives for patenting with those for publishing and how they shape life cycle productivity. In the empirical part life time productivity is investigated by means of the patents of nearly 1,000 German patent active professors in an aggregated form. For young professors, there is a productivity increase observable for around 14 years after the PhD. For older professors, the productivity profile is mainly shaped by the overall rise of academic patenting during the 1990s. Under the premise that academic patents are useful for economic change some policy recommendations are given on how the patenting incentives for academics can be improved.

Keywords: university patenting; patent productivity; scientific productivity; Germany; science policy; publication productivity; academic patenting; patents; patenting incentives.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTTC.2011.040897

International Journal of Technology Transfer and Commercialisation, 2011 Vol.10 No.3/4, pp.392 - 410

Published online: 31 Jan 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article