Help with citations

[talya.ponchek]

*** Sorry for the duplicate posts, just realize this is the appropriate thread ***

Hello again,
I'm sorry to bombard you with a lot of questions but this is the first time I use PATSTAT for research purposes and I'm not quite sure how to go along.
I've been trying to figure out how to compute backwards and forward citations. I understand that on a family level there is NB_CITING_DOCDB_FAM for forward citations. Is there a key for backwards too or those should be computed on an application level?
I don't understand fully the subject discussed in relation to this in PATSTAT data catalog v.5 06 on page in the following paragraph I do not understand the last sentence re the difference between appl. and pub.:
" PAT_PUBLN_ID refers to the citing publication.
 CITED_PAT_PUBLN_ID refers to the publication being cited.
 CITED_APPLN_ID refers to an application being cited. This cited application is not related to a cited publication, but is a valid citation on its own."
Basically, what I want to know for each application is the no. of forward citations, backward citations, and type of forward citations (i.e. who added the citations). Can you help me with the search query, I'm a bit lost.
I'm using online PATSTAT autumn 2015.
Thank you,
Talya

[Geert Boedt]

Hello Talya,
backward citations are basically the same as forward citations, but seen from the other side. If A cites B (backward --> for example citations in search report ), then B is cited by A (forward).
The number of FORWARD citations are pre-agregated in the tls201_table at family level. The forward citations are often used as a patent value indicator. (or if we look at family level, we could say that an invention, covered by a family of patents, that has many forward citations, might potentially be a valuable inventions). Backward citations are rather used for prior art searches. The CCD project is a typical application using backward citations. http://ccd.fiveipoffices.org/CCD-2.0.8/
I have attached a presentation that explains the basics. I also would recommend to have a look at the OECD PATENT STATISTICS manual, and other posts in this forum that cover the topic.
CITED_APPLN_ID: the applicant (never the examiner) refers to an application instead of a publication. Alternative the cited "application" is withdrawn before it was published, so therefore there will be no publication to link to. From a data base point of view, we then take the application number if available, and create a dummy publication. The cited_appln_id is irrelevant if you limit your research to examiner citations (citn_origin = 'SEA').