Francis Narin Biography

A pioneer in the field of scientometrics, Francis Narin founded CHI Research (now called The Patent Board) and set out to quantify the worth of scientific research. Narin studied chemistry at Franklin and Marshall College, got a M.S. degree in nuclear engineering from North Carolina State College and a PhD. in bibliometrics from Walden University. He worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the ITT Research Institute, where he developed tools to evaluate scientific research and how it effects technological advances. CHI Research was founded in 1968 to provide “indicator services” to both government and private clients — ways to measure if their R&D (research and development) dollars were being well-spent, for example. In 1976 Narin and Gabriel Pinski published “Citation Influence for Journal Aggregates of Scientific Publications,” an influential paper in the information field that built on Eugene Garfield‘s systems of citation analysis of research journals. During the 1980s Narin worked on the relationship between research literature and patents, and during the 1990s he worked on patent technology and its effect on stock market performance. Now retired, Narin serves in an advisory capacity to The Patent Board, which still publishes the CHI Research’s “Patent Scorecard,” an industry standard for measuring innovativeness.