Analyzing the impact of companies on AI research based on publications

Abstract Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most momentous technologies of our time. Thus, it is of major importance to know which stakeholders influence AI research. Besides researchers at universities and colleges, researchers in companies have hardly been considered in this context. In this article, we consider how the influence of companies on AI research can be made measurable on the basis of scientific publishing activities. We compare academic- and company-authored AI publications published in the last decade and use scientometric data from multiple scholarly databases to look for differences across these groups and to disclose the top contributing organizations. While the vast majority of publications is still produced by academia, we find that the citation count an individual publication receives is significantly higher when it is (co–)authored by a company. Furthermore, using a variety of altmetric indicators, we notice that publications with company participation receive considerably more attention online. Finally, we place our analysis results in a broader context and present targeted recommendations to safeguard a harmonious balance between academia and industry in the realm of AI research.