Patents and Journal Papers as Credentials for Innovators

Patents and journal papers play important roles in technological progress. Both provide archival records of innovation; both disseminate new knowledge. Beyond this, however, patents and journal papers also provide valuable credentials for innovators. To examine this in greater detail, we introduce a simple working model of systematic knowledge, and argue that patents and journal papers both make original contributions to the edifice of such knowledge. Although a patent certifies an inventor’s original contribution to knowledge, however, it is not an overarching credential, whereas a refereed journal paper is both an original contribution to knowledge and a demonstration of an investigator’s ancillary skills. Thus patents, although impressive on their own, reach their full value as credentials within a portfolio only when accompanied by other credentials that certify the ancillary skills demonstrated by journal paper authors. We conclude that the patents of inventors who have demonstrated such skills are the equal of journal papers in their value as credentials when an investigator’s portfolio is evaluated holistically rather than element-by-element. Several examples drawn from academia illuminate this interpretation. Along the way, the discussion briefly turns to a number of related aspects, including a comparison of the qualities of peer review versus patent examination, the usefulness of patents’ forward-citation counts as indicators of value, and the contributions of patent attorneys.