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672 SOHAR ET AL.

AUTM is a nonprofit organization dedicated to To focus on this phenomenon, the AUTM WIC
bringing research to life by supporting and enhancing formed three subcommittees: Barriers, Synergistic
the global academic technology transfer profession Organizations, and Metrics. The Barriers subcom-
through education, professional development, part- mittee was tasked with understanding in what ways
nerships, and advocacy. AUTM’s more than 3,200 the gender disparity in technology transfer activi-
members represent managers of intellectual prop- ties existed and why. The Synergistic Organizations
erty (IP) from more than 300 universities, research subcommittee was tasked with focusing on what
institutions, and teaching hospitals around the world organizations are doing to address the disparity and
as well as numerous businesses and government coalesce around best practices. Finally, the Metrics
organizations. subcommittee (MSC) was formed to measure the
The role of patenting at academic institutions has impact of the overall WIC initiatives and assess
grown in significance since the passage of the Bayh- whether AUTM WIC activities were having a mea-
Dole Act in 1980, which transferred IP ownership surable impact on increasing female participation in
based on federally funded research discoveries from the commercialization process of AUTM-affiliated
government to universities. According to Sugimoto et universities.
al. (4), women’s rate of total patenting has increased In order to gauge this impact, the WIC/MSC ini-
over the past several decades, from 2.7% in 1976 to tially planned to survey existing AUTM members to
10.8% in 2013. During this period, the overall per- gather baseline statistics by gender for relevant data
centage of patents with women’s names attached rose (for example, invention disclosures and patent appli-
from an average of 2% to 3% across all areas to 10% cations). Follow-up surveys could then be conducted
in industry, 12% in individuals, and 18% in academia. to determine increases in identified areas and provide
The study also concluded that women in academia indication of the impact of the WIC efforts as an over-
patent at higher rates compared to industry and gov- all committee. AUTM conducts an annual survey for
ernment, a phenomenon attributed to the important its university members to gather data around inven-
role of technology transfer offices in setting policies tion disclosure and patent information of individual
that encourage women’s innovation (4). TTOs; however, the gender variable had never been
However, despite a narrowing of the gender gap explored. Incorporating questions into this existing
in commercialization activities since the passage of survey was considered an ideal approach for data
Bayh-Doyle, significant disparities still exist. Multiple collection.
studies have articulated the disproportionately low The annual AUTM survey format has standardized
engagement in the technology transfer process by questions as well as a “supplemental” section whereby
female academicians. For example, a male faculty committees can request to add questions. The WIC/
member is 43% more likely than a female faculty MSC received approval to include two supplemen-
member to submit an invention disclosure (1-3) to tal questions on the 2015 annual AUTM survey. The
his technology transfer office (TTO), which is the WIC/MSC began research into the best questions to
basic entry point of engaging the TTO. Patents in serve the investigative purpose of WIC’s overall mis-
academia, government, and industry do not come sion and, during this due diligence, began to realize
close to reflecting the representation of women in that few of the TTOs represented by WIC members
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics were tracking gender. This discovery was surprising
(STEM), the fields most associated with patentable and led the subcommittee to question the timing of
discoveries. The “impact score” assigned to patents including the supplemental questions on the annual
with the names of women, calculated using the num- AUTM survey, as supplemental questions are only
ber of times these patents were cited in other patent allowed for a period of two consecutive years. After
filings, is much lower compared to patents with male the two-year period, if the questions are considered
names (4). The numbers reflect similar findings to to be of continued value to the larger organizational
earlier research on women and publishing, which community, they may be incorporated into the pri-
found lower citation rates for women (5). mary survey. However, if traction is not gained due