HIGHLY VISIBLE SCIENCE: A LOOK AT THREE DECADES OF RESEARCH FROM ARGENTINA, BRAZIL, MEXICO AND SPAIN

Abstract

Since the international visibility of scientific research is especially important for developing countries, the multidisciplinary journals Nature and Science were analyzed for the papers published from 1973 to 2005 by Latin America´s three most productive countries, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, and these compared with those from Spain. The total numbers of publications were: Spain, 696; Brazil, 411; Mexico, 227; and Argentina, 127. Both Spain and Brazil published over 65% of the total papers in Nature, in contrast to Mexico and Argentina where production was more evenly distributed between the two titles. An increasing presence of all countries over the 33 year span was found, more so for Spain and from 1993 onwards. A high level of international coauthorship was similar in all cases (72-75%). The most visible institutions in the Latin American countries were the large national universities. From 12-18% of publications remained uncited while three on the genome received more than 2000 citations. Analysis of the most highly cited journals indicated a concentration of publications in physics, astronomy and astrophysics, geosciences and molecular biology, findings which were reflected in the results of a text mining analysis of abstracts.

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