Highly cited American papers are selectively cited by American patents. A US paper among the top 1% most highly cited papers is nine times more likely to be cited by a US patent than a randomly chosen US paper. Governments hoping that the research they fund will foster innovation should therefore emphasize research excellence because agencies supporting the best research will support the research most likely to contribute to innovation. When mediocre research is supported, for whatever reason, neither science nor innovation is likely to gain much direct benefit.
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Hicks et al. (2000) studied this question.