Semantic Bridging of Patents and Scientific Publications – The Case of an Emerging Sustainability-Oriented Technology

The detection of emerging technologies in highly dynamic environments such as the evolving area of sustainability-oriented technologies is pivotal for firms, academia and policy alike in order to evaluate business opportunities and to set strategic priorities. Secondary data sources, such as patents and publications, are valuable data to gain a comprehensive overview of emerging technologies. However, the bridging of both data sources with respect to a particular technology cluster is often challenging as for instance time lags between cross-citations complicate the evaluation of connectivity. Applied to the highly dynamic case of phosphorous recovery as an emerging sustainability-oriented technology field, this study proposes a semantic similarity analysis approach of patent and publication documents. Mapping the timely development of emerging sub-technologies in the domain of phosphorous recovery and the new developed indicator, the number of semantically similar publications per patent belonging to a specific sub-technology, contribute to the identification and evaluation of emerging technologies in the highly dynamic context of sustainability transitions.