Upgraded Patent Search and Analysis, completely overhauled Work Area, improved User Interface, and more!

N.B. We are no longer supporting Internet Explorer, all other modern and standards compliant browsers are still supported (e.g. Firefox, Microsoft Edge based on Chromium, Chrome, Safari, Opera).

In this release, we are pleased to launch the initial implementation of the new Lens architecture which effectively combines Patents and Scholarly Works into a single and consistent application. The release also contains a large design refresh which includes many style and usability improvements to the user interface.

This implementation paves the way for the release of the Elasticsearch-based patent index which will provide enhanced patent search and analytic capabilities, and enable the provision of additional patent metadata such as legal status information and a patent API.

Improvements/Changes:

Search Refactor

Refactoring of the Lens web application server and user interface (UI) has allowed us to combine the patent search with the scholar search UI as part of a single-page application, and provide you with a far more consistent user experience, improved loading speeds, and increased performance across all applications.

The newly implemented design also brings many style and usability improvements and a visual update to the UI. For example, you can now transition more smoothly between pages and access the Structured Search and Query Text Editor from the search bar without leaving your search results. Other changes and improvements include:

• Consistent breadcrumbs for patent/scholar pages.
• An option to quickly toggle between patent/scholar search.
• Smoother transitions between “New” and “Edit” search for patent/scholar searches.
• Patent sidebar filters with “Load More” and “View facet Analysis” modals are now consistent with Scholarly Works.
• Support for redirecting legacy URLs to the new URL formats.
• Filters Sidebar is now accessible from the Structured Search page to further refine your search.
• A search keyboard shortcut for power users allowing quicker access to search. Pressing the / key on your keyboard focuses on the search input bar allowing you to start typing or editing a search, similar to GMail, DuckDuckGo and other apps with search functionality.

User Work Area

The entire Work Area has also had an overhaul, allowing for easier access to your Saved Queries, Search History, Collections, Dashboards, Annotations and all other saved work. New Set Actions* tools have also been added to allow merge / intersect or delete set operations on multiple queries.

In addition, we have integrated a Work Area Sidebar to allow easy access to your work from within a search. Other changes and improvements to the Work Area include:

• Consistent filtering, sorting and viewing options across all Work Area pages. For example, now you can switch between a Table and a new Cards view, toggle between patent or scholarly work items, and sort and filter items.
• Search history grouped by date, query syntax highlighting and filter display.
• The Settings and Profile tabs have been merged into a single Account tab.
• Improved search history recording including Scholar search history which is now recorded alongside patent search history. N.B. you must opt-in to “Record search history” to access this feature, see your account settings.

^{*N.B. this functionality is in BETA and does not take any filters applied to your queries into consideration. To access the Set Actions you will need to opt in to Beta features from your account settings.}

Patents

The reading experience of patent PDF documents has now improved with multiple options for previewing or browsing the full PDF while still being able to access your annotations. Please note this largely depends on your browser. Firefox, for example, provides a better native PDF reading experience to Google Chrome. We will be investigating 3rd party PDF reader technology in an upcoming release.

Patent analysis is also now more consistent with Scholarly Works analysis, with customisable charts, new visualisations, and the ability to create and share dashboards. Aligning the Patent and Scholar search has enabled the highly customisable dashboard functionality to be implemented for patents. Other changes and improvements include:

• wo new analysis items "Top Hits" and "Individual Patent" have been added, allowing you to show selected patents within the context of an analysis dashboard.
• Updated the charts in the Analysis Preview including a filterable time series histogram.
• Inventors have been added to the patent list in the search results view.

Lens Reports ^BETA

Lens Report Builder is a new facility, currently in development, for creating evidence-based, sharable reports powered by live Lens data and analytics. In this release, we publish a selection of draft Lens reports covering Coronavirus, CRISPR, Regenerative Agriculture and Electricity Storage to showcase the Report Builder functionality.

If you're interested in making your own open reports backed by live Lens data or helping with some beta testing, please get in touch with us, we'd love to hear from you.

View example reports | Request early access

Additional minor changes:

• Analysis:
  • Added two new analysis chart types: a) Patent document and b) Individual Scholarly Work list charts, allowing you to display selected scholarly works or patents within the context of your specific analysis and based on the available sorting/filtering options.
  • Improved the Logo Grid loading state.
  • Time series analysis visualisations now allow bucket sizes other than year - It automatically adjusts to a smaller bucket size when covering only a few years.
  • Scatter plots now include an optional Size setting for data points.
  • Charts also include an optional Height setting allowing you to adjust the height of charts.
  • Improved chart grid layout in analysis dashboards.
  • Improved default colour scheme for bar charts.

• UI and UX:
  • New themes UI skins: Vanilla and improved Dark themes are now available, and can easily be enabled via the new theme switching control in the Work Area sidebar or from the user Account page. Give them a try!
  • New and improved “Publish and Share collection” modal styles.
  • New icons and fonts.
  • Improved highlighting and hover effect for authors/affiliations.
  • ImprImproved search tips including query syntax information and query validation.
  • Improvements to inventorship claiming.
  • Authors on the Scholarly Works summary tab are now displayed with both their Microsoft Academic and ORCID identifiers (where both exist).

Fixes:

• Clicking "Load More" after typing in the sidebar facet search box now carries over typed input.
• Prevent analysis dashboard sharing forcing presentation mode on.
• Sorting patent collections by "relevance".
• Sidebar sticky state when sidebar content height is greater than viewport.
• Search history delete all functionality.
• Published date in patent exports.
• Ignore “Enter” keypress in facet search fields.
• Fix the issue escaping slashes ("/") when editing a query (for example when using a classification code).

API & Data Improvements:

• New Patent Information Architecture ^{Coming Soon}
  • The Lens is improving the patent information architecture. Based on the Lens MetaRecord concept, the new architecture will provide additional patent metadata, including legal status information, enhanced search, and improved analytic capabilities in our upcoming release 7.0.
  • Patent API - Request Notification for Patent API or Take Our API Survey

• Lens Labs
  • We have now launched Lens Labs portal, a community hub for patent data improvement and access, created and run in a major collaboration with the MIT Knowledge Futures Group and funded by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. If you would like to share your own datasets, or help in a disambiguation project in Lens Labs, please let us know.

• ORCID
  • As part of our continuing integration with global open standards, we have begun to ingest and link the full ORCID database of authors and inventors. So far, we’ve linked over 18M scholarly works with ORCID profiles (up from 3.8M previously). Soon, we hope to make the entire ORCID dataset available within the Lens platform for exploration.

• With this release our Terms of Use, Lens Scholarly API - Terms of Use and PatSeq Bulk Download - Terms of Use have been updated, please see our policies for more details

Interested in helping us improve?

• Share your use case with us and explore how Lens can help you.
• Keep sending us your feedback on the Lens features and functionality.
• Get involved in Lens labs and take action to improve a public resource.
• Request early access to Lens Reports ^BETA and help us build the report builder facility

For guidance on navigating the Scholarly API, please check the online documentation, and to report bugs/issues, usability related questions, or to request features, please use our GitHub issue tracker. For general questions, please visit our Support Center to check out the latest tutorials or contact us at support@lens.org with your queries/comments.

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