This report aims to investigate the possibility that policies for encouraging industrial exploitation of basic research may hamper basic research itself. We focus on the case of top scientists as they are very active in producing academic knowledge and commercialising their research output. The report contains three main parts. First, we analyse the time evolution characterising the patent activities of top scientists. Second, we produce abundant descriptive evidence on different dynamics characterising academic publishing of pure scientists and scientists-inventors in the field of biosciences. Third, we carry out patent-paper-pairs analysis to detect the effect of knowledge privatisation on follow-up scientific knowledge in the specific case of cancer research.
Some unintended consequences of commercialisation of basic science: evidence from top scientists and patent-paper-pairs in biosciences