The evolution of knowledge in patents and in publications. similarities, complementarities and differences

To better understand the relationship between knowledge in patents and knowledge in publications, previous empirical studies mainly focused on observing similarities between publication and patent networks. This paper aims to extend our understanding of this relationship by analyzing time patterns of their interaction, their knowledge content and knowledge structure. From these three types of analysis, we compared the evolution of two knowledge domains based on similarities, potentially complementarities and differences. We employed a novel method, called the concept approach, to select publications and patents in an emerging knowledge field, namely DNA Nanoscience/Nanotechnology, then performed the co-word and network analysis. Our results not only show that both elements of the stylized ‘science push’ and ‘technology pull’ view can be recognized, but also suggest that co-evolution plays a much more prominent role.