Gatekeepers in knowledge transfer between science and technology: an exploratory study in the area of gene editing

Gene editing is an emerging technology that is promising for the prevention and treatment of human diseases. This paper reports an exploratory study of networks of authors of scientific research publications and of inventors involved in patents during the years 2000–2019 in the area of gene editing. We use patents to represent technological output and their non-patent references to represent scientific output that transferred knowledge to the technological output. We apply social network analysis to identify gatekeepers on the boundary of science and technology. We find that author–inventors are crucial for network-wide knowledge transfer as they connect parts of the network that are otherwise disconnected, and can thus be considered gatekeepers, they occupy prominent positions in the co-authorship and co-invention networks. In the area of gene editing, gatekeepers emerged during 2007–2013 and increased significantly in number during 2014–2019. Our results suggest that there are differences in the brokerage role of gatekeepers identified by different indicators. Top gatekeepers identified by betweenness and Q-measure are in areas with intensive knowledge flow among authors and inventors, whereas gatekeepers occupying more structural hole may be in areas with sparse knowledge flow.