*3.2. Countries, A*ffi*liations and Collaborations*

The authors of these publications cited in patents belong to just over 5000 institutions around the world, proving a great collaboration with the rest of the world by the Spanish institutions. A total of 165 different countries have been involved, with the USA being the most important with almost 7500 contributions, followed by the UK with around 4200 and Germany with just over 3700. Figure 3 shows a map of Spain's international collaboration. There is scarce, or almost no, collaboration with African countries, despite the fact that, as will be seen later, the pharmaceutical industry and the area of medicine are very prominent in the domain of patents, and there are very widespread diseases in these areas, such as malaria [39], AIDS, or tuberculosis [40].

**Figure 3.** Worldwide collaboration with Spanish publications cited in patents.

The top 20 Spanish institutions that have contributed mostly with their publications to international patents are shown in Figure 4. It can be observed as expected that the CSIC, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, as the Spanish state agency dedicated to scientific research and technological development, leads this ranking. An example of these studies, which is also widely cited, is a collaboration between University of Valencia, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Harvard Medical School related to the Transcranial magnetic stimulation [41].

**Figure 4.** Top 20 Spanish institutions by publications cited in patents. Note: CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas).

Figure 4 highlights the non-university institutions, which include, apart from a specific section of the CSIC, the National Center for Biotechnology, two other autonomous health institutions, the CIBER—Center for Biomedical Research Network and the Instituto de Salud Carlos III. With respect to the universities, two of the first four stand out: The University of Barcelona and the Autonomous University of Barcelona; and two in Madrid, the Autonomous University of Madrid, and the Complutense University. In fifth place is the University of Valencia, but already distant in the number of publications. In this ranking it is remarkable that there are no other research agencies such as CIEMAT (Energy, Environmental and Technological Research Center) that in this period only appear with 251 publications cited, almost as small universities, as the University of Almeria with 210 publications cited in patents. Interestingly, these two institutions cooperate extensively in research, perhaps due to the proximity of one of the CIEMAT centres, Plataforma Solar de Almeria, to the aforementioned university, e.g., they have investigate solar reflector materials degradation due to the sand deposited on backside protective paints [42].

With the aim of having a metric of the impact of the scientific production of the universities in its transference with respect to the patents. The transference index in patents (TIP) is proposed, and this is calculated as a percentage of publications cited in patents over the total number of publications indexed. Table 2 shows this index calculated for the Top 20 Spanish universities. Those that are above 5% are considered outstanding, excellent between 4% and 5%, very good between 3% and 4%, good between 2% and 3%, average < 2%.

This TIP index shows that among this top 20, 4 universities are in the range of outstanding, apart from the three most productive, now included in this category is the University of Navarra (5.24), which is a private university. In the range of excellent there are two universities: Complutense University (4.74) and Pompeu Fabra University (4.66). Further, in the rank of very good, we find eight universities.


**Table 2.** Proposed Transference Index in Patents (TIP).

What is surprising at first glance is that the most technological universities are not necessarily the best at this transfer rate: Polytechnic University of Valencia (3.77), Polytechnic University of Catalonia (2.85), and Technical University of Madrid (2.31).

In Figure 5, the top 20 non-Spanish institutions that participate in these works have been represented the ones with which most collaboration takes place. The collaboration of Spanish institutions is especially remarkable with the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) in France with more than 1000 works. In addition, there are three other institutions in this country in the top 20: Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (773), Université Paris-Saclay (498) and Sorbonne Université (416). This fact is striking since France was in fourth place in Spanish collaboration.

**Figure 5.** Top 20 Foreign institutions that collaborates with Spanish institutions.

Spanish institutions collaboration with foreign countries is significant, as 21,136 of the total number of contributions analysed are of Spanish authorship only, representing 51% of the works. Therefore, in broad terms, this means that half of the contributions cited in patents are in collaboration with foreign institutions. However, when it concerns universities, the percentage is significantly lower Table 2 shows the contributions of each university without collaboration. If the data are analyzed in relative terms, in terms of percentages, the University of Murcia has the highest percentage without collaboration with 41% and the lowest, with 5%, is the Pompeu Fabra University. But the important

data is the average, which is 25%. So, only one of each four contributions cited in patents is authored by a Spanish university without collaboration.

Concerning the collaboration with the USA, the first place is taken by Harvard University (864), followed by the National Institutes of Health (539). With the UK, the institutions are universities, University College London (510), Imperial College London (455), and the University of Oxford (411). It is striking that in this top 20 of international collaboration no German institution exists, even though Germany is the third country in terms of international collaboration for Spain. Finally, it should be noted that, apart from the CNRS, the only two non-university institutions carrying out research in the field of health are the aforementioned Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (France) and the Karolinska Institutet (Sweden).
