Evaluating global technology transfer research performance

Technology transfer is one of the most important fields in research and development of new products and new technology knowledge services, technology transfer also one of key issues in knowledge economics era. This study evaluates the global technology transfer development trend of research for the past sixteen years and provides insights into the characteristics of technology transfer research activities to identify development map, tendencies, or regularities that may exist in papers. Data are based on the online version of SCI, Web of Science from 1992 to 2008. Articles referring to technology transfer were assessed according to many aspects including logarithmic model fitting publication outputs during 1992-2007. The result displays that the USA is number one in technology transfer research totaling 447 papers, followed by UK totaling 150 papers. Other leading countries in technology transfer research include Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Canada, Australia and France. This new bibliometric method can help researchers realize the panorama of global technology transfer research, and establish further research direction.