European research in the field of production technology and manufacturing systems: an exploratory analysis through publications and patents

This paper develops a structured comparison among a sample of European researchers in the field of production technology and manufacturing systems on the basis of two research outputs: scientific publications and patents. Researchers are evaluated and compared by a variegated set of indicators concerning (1) the output of individual researchers and (2) that of groups of researchers from the same country. Whilst not claiming to be exhaustive, the results of this preliminary study provide a rough indication of the publishing and patenting activity of European researchers in the field of interest, identifying (dis)similarities between different countries with regard to their inclination to publishing and patenting. Of particular interest is a proposal for aggregating analysis results by means of maps based on publication and patent indicators. A large amount of empirical data are presented and discussed.