PONE-D-21-18643

Identifying and characterising product and process inventions in patent data

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Seliger,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

The review process for your manuscript entitled "Identifying and characterizing product and process inventions in patent data," which you submitted to PLOS ONE, is now complete. I have received comments from two reviewers. The review team thoroughly reviewed the manuscript and both reviewers recommend major revision. Please read carefully the comments and submit the revised manuscript.

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PLOS ONE

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We received funding from the European Patent Office Academic Research Programme: https://www.epo.org/learning/materials/academic-research-programme.html

Part of Sebastian Heinrich's salary was funded by this grant.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The paper uses accessible patent data to classify patents into process patents, product patents, and mixed patents, which is an important study to promote the understanding of process patents, which are of particular interest in patent analysis. I will be happy to recommend the publication of the paper after the authors address a few points, some of which are quite important in my opinion.

My main concern is that the statistical validity of the method used to identify process patents, product patents and mixed patents, which is one of the core contributions of the study, is not ensured. The authors say that "In contrast, the identification of processes is quite complete if using the extracted keywords". However, I am not sure why only text information can be used to classify process patents when other information is available such as article citations and IPC. Moreover, the study uses keywords based on the patent's expert as queries in order to classify each patent, but there is no statistical explanation as to whether these keywords are appropriate enough to obtain a comprehensive list of process patents. The paper only obtains patents where the set keywords appear at the beginning of the sentence, and there must be sufficient evidence to show that these are equal to process patents, product patents or mixed patents. It would be good to compare several methods to show that the proposed method is a better one.

Also, the analysis of the word window used to classify each claim described in Supporting Information 1 needs to be tested to ensure the validity of the method, e.g. by checking how many words are identified as process patents (e.g. 1-10 words) rather than visually comparing 2-words and 5-words criterion.

With these experiments, it can be said that the characteristics of each patent have been clarified, as mentioned in the Conclusion.

And why not do the same analysis for process patents and mixed patents? Although this study compares process patents and mixed patents using product patents as a base, the comparison of the two relatively new forms of patents(mixed and process) will enable a more detailed description of the characteristics of each of the three patents.

Minor

In some figures, authors could make it more legible. For example, in Fig.1, what does the name of y-axis "Count in 1000" mean? Comparing the EPO and the USPTO, the USPTO has a larger scale on the y-axis, but where does this difference come from? To illustrate the percentage of each patent as mentioned in page 5, it would be easier to read if stacked bar graphs showing the percentage of each patent was added behind the plot.

In page 8 line 246, the word "nnlp_cits" must be "lnnpl_cits".

In Table1. process keywords and use keywords should be written separately.

Reviewer #2: This study focuses on identifying the product and process inventions and characterizing them using patent data. The results provide some meaningful technological trend and practical implications. However, there are several points needed to be addressed for more complete one.

1 This study lacks an academic contribution. The theme is quite technical so that the research motivation is more or less unclear. It means this study has a weak connection to theoretical literature. Simply identifying product and process patents and linking them to the fundamental characters of patents are not enough to publish in the academic journal. In that sense why this study is necessary has to be firmly addressed in the theoretical context: economic theory, technology management, innovation theory, and so on. Also, the authors need to shed light on the novelty of this study and its results compared to the previous studies and the relevant literature.

2 Similarly, in order to overcome the limited value of this study, interpreting the results should be extended to the theoretical literature. How they are meaningful in the technology management, innovation, industry trend, and so on should be addressed.

3 The conclusion part is too short to enrich its academic value. The present conclusion seems a repetition of the findings rather than a discussion on the main findings, their limitations, and further studies. Inclusion of discussion part is strongly recommended.

4. The present title seems to be quite neutral. Title modification is also recommended, which reflects its academic contribution.

5 There is no numbering of subtitles. It may lead the readers to a little confusion to follow the paper. It should be more systematic.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Appropriability and basicness of R&D: Identifying and characterising product and process inventions in patent data

PONE-D-21-18643R1

Dear Dr. Seliger,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

George Vousden

Staff Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: This revision is much improved than the previous one in providing its theoretical meaning. And also the title has been changed and matched well with it. Now it seems more proper for the academic journal. For more complete paper I’d like to suggest that the abstract should be changed by adding the theoretical contribution.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No

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