PatentsView: An Open Data Platform to Advance Science and Technology Policy

What are the connections between science and improvements in economic and social outcomes that drive the “value” of science? Most of the time, these connections are circuitous, varied, diffuse, and opaque. Patent data offer an opportunity to expose new connections between science and technology as well as exposing links to downstream economic and social outcomes. The PatentsView open data platform performs data preparation, visualization, and adds helpful features to USPTO’s administrative data. PatentsView is fundamentally a free “intermediate good” that provides the needed materials for researchers, policymakers, and students to conduct their own analyses, make their own linkages, and derive their own insights. This paper provides a quick tour of the PatentsView platform.