Open Science and Open Access Policies as Drivers of Innovation: Evidence from Patent Activity in European Countries

Open Science (OS) and Open Access (OA) have become key pillars of research and innovation policy, yet their concrete impacts on innovation outputs remain underexplored. This study aims to assess whether the presence and scope of national OS&OA policies are associated with changes in patent activity across 29 European countries. Using a panel dataset from 2000 to 2023, the analysis applies fixed-effects regression models with clustered standard errors and robust specifications, focusing on the logarithm of total patent applications as the dependent variable. The results indicate a positive and statistically significant association between the presence of OS&OA policy (x2) and the number of patent applications (coefficient=0.3116, p < 0.001). While the interaction between policy presence and policy scope was removed due to multicollinearity, the main effects of policy scope also showed statistical significance (coefficient=0.1901, p=0.0019). After log-transformation to address skewness, model robustness was confirmed using heteroskedasticity-consistent standard errors. These findings support the hypothesis that well-developed national OS&OA policies can contribute to innovation performance, as proxied by patent output.