2018
Introduction to ORCID Researcher Identifiers in R with rorcid
2018/07/13
Getting started with ORCID using the rorcid package. A practical introduction to searching for researcher identifiers with the ORCID API and retrieving publication data with rorcid, purrr and rcrossref.
Separating and Trimming Messy Data the Tidy Way
2018/06/18
When working with data tables from the scientific or patent literature, columns often contain concatenated data. Here’s a tidy approach to dealing with concatenation and exploration of why trimming white space really matters
API Resources for the Scientific Literature in R and Python
2018/06/11
Quick API resources to search for scientific publications in R or Python.
Creating A Bibliography with rcrossref
2018/05/23
Creating bibliographies is a pain but the knitr and the rcrossref packages in RStudio will ease your suffering.
Exploring Geocoding Scientific Literature with R
2018/05/22
Exploring geocoding 5000 organisation names from Web of Science in R with the Google Maps API using the placement, ggmap and googleway packages.
Counting Patent First Filings the Tidy Way with R
2018/05/11
For accurate patent statistics you need to be able to identify the earliest priority filings. This article shows you how with R as part of work for the WIPO Patent Analytics Handbook.
An Update on Importing Excel Data in R
2018/02/06
If you are looking for how to import Excel into R… read this update. It’s now much easier to import and the post also covers the dreaded https problem and using writexl.
Dr. Evil meets the robotstxt package
2018/01/08
A quick and mildly evil guide to the @ROpensci robotstxt package
2016
Creating an Infographic with infogram
2016/04/20
In this article we will use RStudio to prepare patent data for visualisation in an infographic using the online software tool infogram.
Infographics are a popular way of presenting data in a way that is easy for a reader to understand without reading a long report. Infographics are well suited to …
2015
Exploring Scientific Literature with rplos
2015/10/27
In this chapter we look at the use of the rplos package from rOpenSci to access the scientific literature from the Public Library of Science using the PLOS Search API.
The Public Library of Science (PLOS) is the main champion of open access peer reviewed scientific publications and has published …
Patent Datasets
2015/08/07
One problem for people seeking to learn patent analytics is a lack of access to patent data from different sources.
In this article I introduce the patent datasets developed for the WIPO Open Source Patent Analytics Project as training sets for patent analytics. The datasets will be used in the …
An Introduction to Plotly for Patent Analytics
2015/08/01
In this article we provide a quick introduction to the online graphing service Plotly to create graphics for use in patent analysis.
Plotly is an online graphing service that allows you to import excel, text and other files for visualisation. It also has API services for R, Python, MATLAB and a …
An Overview of Patent Analytics Tools
2015/07/26
This article provides an overview of the open source and free software tools that are available for patent analytics. The aim of the chapter is to serve as a quick reference guide for some of the main tools in the tool kit.
This article is now a chapter in the WIPO Manual on Open Source Patent …
Accessing Patent Data with the Lens
2015/07/26
In this article we provide a brief introduction to The Lens patent database as a free source of data for patent analytics.
The Lens is a patent database based in Australia that describes itself as “an open global cyberinfrastructure to make the innovation system more efficient and fair, more …
Graphing Patent Data with ggplot2 part2
2015/07/20
This is Part 2 of an article introducing R for patent analytics that focuses on visualising patent data in R using the ggplot2 package.
In Part 1 we introduced the basics of wrangling patent data in R using the dplyr package to select and add data. In this article we will go into more detail on …
Accessing Patent Data with WIPO Patentscope
2015/05/25
Patentscope is the WIPO public access database. It includes coverage of the Patent Cooperation Treaty applications (administered by WIPO) and a wide range of other countries including the European Patent Office, USPTO and Japan totalling 51 million patent documents including 2.8 million PCT …
Visualising Data with Tableau Public
2015/05/17
In this article we will be analysing and visualising patent data using Tableau Public.
Tableau Public is a free version of Tableau Desktop and provides a very good practical introduction to the use of patent data for analysis and visualisation. In many cases Tableau Public will represent the …
Understanding Patent Databases
2015/05/17
This article provides a quick overview of some of the main sources of free patent data. It is intended for quick reference and points to some free tools for accessing patent databases that you may not be familiar with.
This article is now a chapter in the WIPO Manual on Open Source Patent Analytics. …
Network Visualisation with Gephi
2015/05/17
This article focuses on visualising patent data in networks using the open source software Gephi.
Gephi is one of a growing number of free network analysis and visualisation tools with others including Cytoscape, Tulip, GraphViz, Pajek for Windows, and VOSviewer to name but a few. In addition, …
Understanding Patent Data Fields
2015/05/07
This article provides a walk through of patent data fields for those who are completely new to patent analytics or want to understand the workings of patent data a little bit better. A video version of the walk through is available here and the slide deck is available for download in .pdf, …
Cleaning Patent Data with Open Refine
2015/05/02
Cleaning patent data is one of the most challenging and time consuming tasks involved in patent analysis. In this chapter we will cover.
[…] Open Refine is an open source tool for working with all types of messy data. It started life as Google Refine but has since migrated to Open Refine. It …
Reading and Writing an Excel File in R
2015/04/30
This post was updated in 2018 and you can read it here
The CRAN Project has the following to say about importing Excel files into R.
“The first piece of advice is to avoid doing so if possible! If you have access to Excel, export the data you want from Excel in tab-delimited or comma-separated form, …
Importing CSV files into R
2015/04/29
This post is now showing its age and was the first thing I wrote about R. Everything still works but readr, which was brand new at the time, has made a big difference. I now suggest the importing local csv files into RStudio using File > Import > From Text (readr) as it is by far the easiest …