Supporting dataset for: From Centralized to Distributed Entropy: Long-Term Resilience and Structural Evolution of Regional Innovation Networks in the Yangtze River Delta

This dataset supports the manuscript entitled "From Centralized to Distributed Entropy: Long-Term Resilience and Structural Evolution of Regional Innovation Networks in the Yangtze River Delta" (Manuscript ID: entropy-4366483, submitted to Entropy). The dataset contains inter-city patent cooperation records used to construct weighted innovation networks among 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), China. The study covers the period from 2005 to 2025, with data provided at six time points: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 (where 2021–2025 are annual data). Data sources:- For 2005–2020: Pre-processed data obtained from the National Earth System Science Data Center (http://www.geodata.cn), providing the total number of cooperative invention patents between each unordered pair of the 41 YRD cities.- For 2021–2025: Directly retrieved from the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) Patent Search and Analysis System (https://pss-system.cponline.cnipa.gov.cn/). File contents (included in this deposit):- Adjacency matrices (weighted) for each year (CSV format)- Summary statistics: network density, clustering coefficient, average path length, and resilience index- README.txt: detailed description of file formats, variable definitions, and usage notes These data allow replication of the network robustness analysis under targeted attack scenarios, computation of entropy-based metrics, and validation of the polycentric resilience hypothesis. Please cite the associated manuscript when using this dataset. For any questions regarding the data, please contact the corresponding authors: Fenglei Zhou ([e-mail]) or Zhongying Hu ([e-mail]).