**5. Conclusions**

Universities and, by extension research centers or agencies, have the duty of producing knowledge, which is generally measured by their scientific production in the form of publications, which, if they are of good quality, are included in international databases that serve as a basis for future research or technological development. Today, this mission is intended to be extended to the solving of society's problems in general and specifically to the demands of the industrial segment. This new purpose has to date not been easily measured except in the form of patents that universities themselves have developed or applied for. However, this last aspect remains the most important aspect of basic research, which is probably the one that involves the greatest amount of funding. This study has been motivated by the need to understand the role of public research in the development of industry, which is reflected in the contribution to the number of patents. The aim is to address an important gap in the research system by proposing the dilemma of applied research versus basic research carried out in universities and research centres.

This study sets out a methodology to assess the impact of university research on the patent system by analysing the global impact of universities on international patents. In order to evaluate this parallelism, a methodology is established to relate the contribution of Spanish scientific production to international patents based on their citation in these patents. The study was carried out at a global level, but it has been reduced to the field of medicine since the high percentage (20%) of studies cited in patents related to this scientific field.

It has been observed that overall investment in research means an increase in the number of publications that have been cited in patents. Therefore, a direct relationship between funding and transfer is shown. At the same time, international collaboration amongst Spanish authors of these publications is a constant, as shown by the high level of collaboration with countries such as the USA. UK, or Germany at a global level and with France in the field of medicine. Apart from the leading role of the public research body (CSIC), the universities are the institutions that produce applied research and are cited in the patents. A method has been presented that allows the classification of universities based on the relationship between their overall scientific production and the production applied to patents. The results obtained allow to observe that the universities with a TIP (transference index in patents) higher than 5% (outstanding) are not those that have a mainly technological profile, as it would be reasonable to think. However, in the medicine transference index in patents (MED-TIP), it is the universities with medical schools that are positioned at the top of the table.

As an index of where Spanish science is standing out at the transfer level, the Topics and Topic Clusters have been considered. In addition, the highlighted Topics can be used for decision-making in future allocations to research funding. However, the fact that prominence (the topics) represents demand and general visibility should not be lost sight of. It is therefore necessary to support the top 10% topic and top 10% topic cluster indicators. The analysis of the topic and cluster topic has determined networks relating the publications cited in patents both at a general level and from the medical point of view. The clustering of outstanding topics translates directly into the visibility of these publications for the industry sector.

This study shows that public research is fundamental to industrial R&D, as reflected by the number of patents that are based on this knowledge and significantly to R&D in the field of medicine. The leading topics according the ASJC classification were oncology (11.78%), immunology and allergy (9.48%), infectious diseases (7.1%), cardiology and cardiovascular (6.63%), hematology (6.44%), neurology (Clinical) (5.34%), and general medicine (4.74%). In a more detailed and independent analysis, it allowed to determine the leading topics, which were: neoplasms, leukemia, DNA repair, human leukocyte antigen, Alzheimer disease, and carcinoma.

Contrary to the idea that university research generates abstract knowledge that is of poor use to society in general, this study reveals that public research and above all that carried out in universities suggests new products in the form of patents and therefore helps society to advance. Since patents are the basis for industries to develop a product, such research thus reaches society to improve our quality of life.

In short, from the bibliometric point of view, both databases such as Scopus or Web of Science, which provide quality indicators at the publication level, and databases such as JCR or SJR, which quantify the quality of the journals, lack specific indicators that measure the impact of both the publications and their sources in their R&D transfer aspect. Therefore, a ranking of journals cited in patents has been proposed as an indicator of scientific transfer, since it is fed by the industrial sector itself and in which the university and research centres can also be involved. Thus, for universities, the TIP (transference index in patents) has been proposed as a long-term indicator of scientific transfer in patents. In spite of the revealed complexity of the problem about the rates of return to R&D, this work opens new perspectives in the field of transfer of both basic and applied science by proposing a ranking for both journals and research centres, all based on the work cited in patents.

**Author Contributions:** M.C., A.A., J.A.G.-C. and F.M.-A. conceived the research, designed the search, and wrote the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors would like to thank to the CIAIMBITAL (University of Almeria, CeiA3) for its support.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
