Synthetic Biology Research and Innovation Profile 2018: Publications and Patents

A profile of synthetic biology research and innovation is presented using data on publications and patents worldwide and for the UK and selected benchmark countries. The search approach used to identify synthetic biology publications identifies a core set of synthetic biology papers, extracts and refines keywords from these core records, searches for additional papers using those keywords, and supplements with articles published in dedicated synthetic biology journals and curated synthetic biology special collections. For the period from 2000 through to mid-July 2018, 11,369 synthetic biology publication records are identified worldwide. For patents, the search approach uses the same keywords as for publications then identifies further patents using a citation-tree search algorithm. The search covered patents by priority year from 2003 to early August 2018. Following geographical matching, 8,460 synthetic biology basic patent records were identified worldwide. Using this data, analyses of publications are presented which look at the growth of synthetic biology outputs, top countries and leading organizations, international co-authoring, leading subject categories, citations, synthetic biology on the map of science, and funding sponsorship. For patents, the analysis examines growth in patenting, national variations in publications compared with patenting, leading patent assignees, and the positioning of synthetic biology on a visualized map of patents.