a profile of science in brazil

Join@published by Elsevier Science R V., Amsterdam

and Akad~miai Kiad6, Budapest

Scientometrics,

VoL 35, No. 1 (1996) 33-44

A PROFILE OF SCIENCE IN BRAZIL

JACQUELINE LETA, L. DE MEIS

lnsOzuto Ci~ncias Biomedicas, Departamento de Bioquimica M$dica, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, CEP 21941- 590 (Brasil)

(Received May 30, 1995)

The Brazilian contribution to publications in science and humanities increased from 0.29% of the worldwide total in 1981 to 0.46% in 1993. In science, but not in humanities, Brazilian publications tend to follow the world publication trend; thus, during the period 1981-1993, 57.9% of Brazilian publications were in life sciences, 35.4% in exact sciences, 3.9% in earth sciences and 2.9% in humanities. The ten institutions with the largest number of publications are universities, which account for half of the all Brazilian publications. The total number of authors on the Brazilian 1981-1993 publications was 52,808. Among these 57.8% appear in only one publication and 17.5% have their publications cited more than 10 times.

I n t r o d u c t i o n

Science in an institutionafized form began in the mid-nineteenth century and has

grown exponentially during the past 150 years. The large amount of new knowledge

generated in this period has led to profound changes in everyday life. This knowledge

is produced in relatively few countries: the USA, Britain, Germany, Japan, France,

Canada and Russia. Scientists in these countries are responsible for 75% of the

scientific papers published in the most important scientific journals each year 1-3 and,

with the exception of Japan, received 79% of the Nobel prizes in science awarded

between 1901 and 1984. These countries have been referred to as "producers" of new

knowledge. 2 The rest of the planet, representing 83% of the world population, is

composed of countries that "consume" knowledge and their social and economic

development are closely dependent on those countries that generate knowledge. In

many developing countries, including Brazil, there has been increasing awareness of

the need to develop science. In these countries, institutionalization of science is

recent when compared to the countries that "produce" knowledge: the first federal

agency to support science in Brazil, National Council for the Development of Science

0138- 9130/96/US $15. -

Copyright �9 1996Akademiai Kdad6, Budapest

All rights reserved

J. LETA, L. DE MEIS: A PROFILE OF SCIENCE IN BRAZIL

and Technology (CNPq), was created in 1951. This paper analyzes trends in scientific

publication in Brazil during the period 198i- 1993.

Methodology

Brazilian performance indicators and number of publications were obtained from

database purchased from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), in a floppy

disc version that was analyzed with the help of a Microsoft Access 2.0 software.

Articles included in this database contained at least one address in Brazil and were

published between 1981 and 1993 (inclusive dates). The database inclucles general information about each article, such as title, journal source, data of publication and

authors' names and addresses as well as number of citations per year and the subject

area. In the database provided by ISI, the source of journal was used to assemble the

different research fields into 7 groups. In this work the different subject areas were

rearranged into eleven groups as shown in Table 1. Meeting abstracts, discussions and editorials were discarded. In order to calculate the number of publications from

different research institutes and universities, we searched as far as the address of the

fifth author and used all the versions of the institution's name that could be identified

in the database. The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, for example, was listed by

different authors in eleven different versions. The information in the database was

also examined using a Foxbase 2.0, a program that makes it possible to identify

authors by number of publications and number of citations.

Results and discussion

Number of publications

A total of 43,051 publications in science and humanities were published by

Brazilians during the period of 1981 through 1993. This number does not include

meeting abstracts, discussions and editorials and the vast majority (97%) are in the

field of science. Thus, there was a steady increase in the annual scientific production

from 1981 to 1992 (Fig. 1) so that Brazil's contribution to world scientific production increased from 0.29% in 1981 to 0.53% in 1992, and was 0.46% in 1993.

34 Scientometrics 35 (1996)

J. LETA, L. D E MEIS: A P R O F I L E O F S C I E N C E I N B R A Z I L

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J. LETA, L. D E MEIS: A PROFILE OF SCIENCE IN BRAZIL

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Fig. 1. The Brazilian contribution to world publications. The numbers of world publications from 1981 to 1993 provided by ISI are respectively 783,339; 820,264; 872,066; 867,819; 906,530; 928,172; 908,193; 899,959; 859,946; 877,750; 898,000; 956,598 and 963,001. Symbols: o Brazilian publication; �9 % of world publications

The Brazilian contribution in different subject areas is shown in Table 2. Notice that the sum of publications in all areas is 47,183, i.e. higher than the total number of publications mentioned above. The difference represents publications that are listed in more than one subject area. This duplication was not culled out because we wanted to compare the productioa in the different areas. Thus, a paper listed under "Clinical Medicine" may also appear in "Biomedical Sciences".

An approximate profile of the world's publications in science and humanities can be inferred from the percentage of journals listed by ISI in each area. This approach is limited by the fact that journals differ in the number of articles published annually. In science, but not in humanities, Brazilian publications tend to reflect the world publication trend. Thus, the area of life sciences includes 48.8% of the journals listed by ISI and 57.9% of the Brazilian publications. Exact sciences include 27.1% and 35.4%, earth sciences 5.5% and 3.9% and humanities 18.6% and 2.9% of the journals and of Brazilian publications, respectively. Based on subject area, Brazilians tend to publish more in physics than the world tendency and less in humanities. The greater emphasis on physics in Brazilian publications has already been pointed out in a recent analysis of science in Latin America. 4 The relatively low rate of publication in the humanities is probably related to the fact that most Brazilians in this field tend to publish their results in theses and in books written in Portuguese, not indexed in the ISI database. This limits access to dissemination of the Brazilian contribution in humanities.

36 Sctentornetrics 35 (1996)


Table 2

Profile of publications in Brazilian science and humanities compared with the profile of distribution of

journals worldwide

Brazilian Publication World list of Subject (1981 - 1993) periodicals A / B areas number % (A) number* % (B)

Biology 8,338 17.6 936 12.6 1.40 Biomedicine 12,130 25.7 1,324 17.8 1.44 Clinical Medicine 5,639 12.0 1,267 17.1 0.70 Social Medicine 1,206 2.6 95 1.3 2.00 Chemistry 3,976 8.4 354 4.8 1.77 Physics 8,568 18.2 430 5.8 3.14 Mathematics 1,066 2.3 251 3.4 0.67 Earth Sciences 909 2.1 233 3.1 0.67 Environment 848 1.8 178 2.4 0.75 Engineering 3,069 6.5 973 13.1 0.50 Humanities 1,354 2.8 1,380 18.6 0.15 Total 47,103 100 7,421 100

* The number of scientific journals for each field was obtained from the Science Citation lndex/91 and Social Science Citation Index/91.

Impact of Brazilian publications

The quality of science produced was analyzed by taking into consideration two parameters: the number of publications that have never been cited, and the impact factor 5 given by the ratio between citations and number of publications (Tables 3 and 4). The percentage of uncited publications from Brazil is smaller than the world

average (Table 3). On the other hand, the Brazilian impact factor is smaller than the

world average. Among the different subjects areas (Table 4), humanities, biological sciences and social medicine stand out with the largest percentage of uncited publications and the smallest impact factor, while the converse is true for earth sciences, physics and chemistry.

Scientornetrics 35 (1996) 37


Table 3

Impact factor and percentage of uncited articles for the Brazilian and world publications

Publications Citations Impact Uncited 1981 - 1990 1981 - 1993 factor articles

(A) (B) (B/A) (%)

Brazil 31,473 139,853 3.7 43.8 World 8,724,038 52,508,903 6.0 48.8

The impact factor and uncited articles refer to publications appearing in the period of 1981-1990 and the citations from these articles from 1981 up to 1993. The impact factor was calculated dividing the number of citations (B) by the number of publications (A). The number of world publications and citations are from ISI. The values in the table include meeting abstracts, editorials and discussions.

Table 4

Impact factor and uncitedness of Brazilian publications in different subject areas

Subject Publications Citations Impact Uncitedness areas 1981 - 1990 1981 - 1993 factor (%)

Biology 5,992 11,268 Biomedicine 8,152 44,140 Clinical Medicine 3.744 20,544 Social Medicine 927 2,572 Chemistry 2,590 13.817 Physics 5,425 28.417 Mathematics 741 2,499 Earth Sciences 665 4,000 Environment 529 2,134 Engineering 1,973 8,191 Humanities 1,019 1,254 Total 31,757 138,836

1.9 59.3 5.4 27.8 5.5 37.2 2.8 53.5 5.3 18.0 5.2 20.2 3.4 34.0 6.0 23.5 4.0 25.5 4.2 35.2 1.2 71.3 4.4 35.4

The impact factor was calculated as in Table 3.

International co-authorship patterns

Lewison et al. 6 reported that scientific co-operation between countries has increased significantly during the past decade. We found that 26.6% of the Brazilian publications in all fields between 1981 and 1993 were co-authored with scientists of other cOuntries. The extent of international co-operation varies depending on the subject areas (Table 5), it is higher in earth sciences and lower inbiological science, social medicine and humanities.

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38 /

Scientornetrics 35 (1996)

J. LETA, L. D E MEIS: A P R O H L E OF SCIENCE IN BRAZIL

It is interesting to note that the areas with highest and lowest impact factor are also those with the greatest and least participation, respectively, of authors from other countries.

Table 5

Brazilian publications with international co-authorship (1981 - 1993)

Publications Subject with co-authorship areas number % of total

Biological 1,332 16.0 Biomedical 2,869 23.7 Clinical Medicine 1,397 24.8 Social Medicine 218 18.1 Chemistry 1,272 32.0 Physics 2,927 34.0 Mathematics 407 38.2 Earth Sciences 482 48.7 Environment 274 32.3 Engineering 1,096 35.7 Humanities 251 18.5 All fields 12,525 26.6

The total number of publications for the different subject areas is shown in Table 2.

Brazilian universities

Brazilian universities tend to be the institutions with higher scientific output. The

ten institutions with the largest number of publications in 1981-1993 are all university campuses (Table 6); five are located in the state of Silo Paulo. These universities are responsible for half of all Brazilian publications in the database. The

number of faculty members working full time on these campuses is large compared to the number of scientific publications, suggesting that only a fraction of them is effectively engaged in productive research. At two of the campuses (USP-Ribeirlio Preto and the Federal University of Silo Paulo) the publications are concentrated in

life sciences, and at one of them (USP/Sfio Carlos) they are concentrated in chemistry and physics, with relatively few workers in other fields (Table 7). We were

able to identify 101 Brazilian institutions with at least 10 publications in 1981-1993. Among these, only 7 universitary campuses of the 10 listed in Table 7 had a


J. LETA, L. DE MEIS: A PROHLE OF SCIENCE IN BRAZIL

significant productivity in all subject areas, being therefore the sole centers in Brazil with a scientific structure that could foster multidisciplinary research, an important feature of modern science.

Table 6

The ten most productive research centers in Brazil

Publications Faculty Campus* 1981 - 1993 1991 - 1993 Members A/B

(A) (B)

USP/SP 6,248 1,862 2,724 0.68 UFRJ 3,910 1,297 1,884 0.69 UNICAMP 3,647 1,176 1,850 0.64 UFMG 1,998 673 1,824 0.37 UFRGS 1,841 619 1,272 0.49 UFSP (EPM) 1,702 569 272 2.09 USP/Rib. Preto 1,479 441 544 0.81 UFPE 1,472 442 1,024 0.43 UNB 1,237 350 1,195 0.29 USP/S. Carlos 1,177 411 346 1.19 Total 24,711 7,840 12,935 0.61

* Data on number of full time faculty members are from: Minist6rio de Educa~fio, Cultura e Desporto/SESu-Boletim de Dados Fisicos e Orqament~trios (1993) and Anu~irio USP/94. In the table, the abbreviations refer to the following university campuses: USP/SP, Universidade of S~o Paulo, in the city of S~o Paulo; UFRJ, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, in the city of Rio de Janeiro; UNICAMP, state university of Sio Paulo in Campinas; UFMG, Federal University of Minas Gerais, in Belo Horizonte; UFRGS, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, in Porto Alegre; USP/Rib. Pret, University of S~o Paulo, in Ribeirho Preto; UFPE, Federal University of Pernambuco, in Recife; UNB, Federal University of Brasflia; USP/S. Carlos, University of S~o Paulo, in Sio Carlos; UFSP (EPM), Federal University S~o Paulo/S~o Paulo school of medicine, in S~o Paulo. All faculty members listed above have a contractual obligation to work in only one institution and to carry out research. The number of faculty members increases substantially, and the ratio A/B decreases if the professors which work for 12, 20 or 40 hours per week without full dedication to the universities are included.

40 Scientoraetrics 35 (1996)

J. L E T A , L. D E MEIS: A P R O F I L E O F S C I E N C E I N B R A Z I L

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J. LETA, L. DE MEIS: A PROFILE OF SCIENCE IN B R AZIL

Number of scientists: Leadership and the '7~rain drain"

With the purpose of estimating the number of Brazilian scientists task force,

different agencies have attempted to count the number of scienr:sts and engineers in the country. The values vary over a widerange (65,000, 7 21,5418 and 8,5809). The

Brazilian Academy of Sciences, which mantains high scientific standards for admission, had a total of 298 members in 1994. The large discrepancy among these numbers is probably due to the criteria used to identify scientists. This difficulty is

illustrated by the data Tables 8 and 9. The total number of authors on Brazilian

publications in 1981-1993 was 52,808. Most of them (57.9%) appeared on only one publication (Table 8), and only 17.5% had their publications cited more than 10 times during the 13-year period (Table 9). The frequency of citations shown in Table 9 is similar to that previously reported for authors worldwide, 10 suggesting that the

profile observed reflects a world reality rather than a specific feature of Brazilian

science.

Table 8

Number of publications per individual (1981 - 1993)

Number of Authors publication n %

1 30,566 57.9 2 8,579 16.2 3 4,100 7.8 4 2,396 4.5 5 1,494 2.8 6 1,073 2.0

7 - 1 3 2,962 5.6 14 -26 1,163 2.2

> 26 475 0.9

Total 52,808 100.0

Number of authors includes non-Brazilians as well as Brazilians on each publication. As shown in Table 5, 26.6% of all publications in the databank include international co-authorship.

Two important aspects can be deduced from the data in Tables 8 and 9. First, a large number of graduate students must be trained in order to obtain a few talents with a high scientific productivity. This investment is not always available in


J. L E T A , L. D E MEIS : A P R O F I L E O F S C I E N C E I N B R A Z I L

developing countries. Second, developing countries such as Brazil are particularly vulnerable to losses entailed by the "brain drain". During the social and economical crises that occur frequently in developing countries, scientists tend to emigrate in search of more favorable working conditions; only the more skilled are able to compete for suitable positions abroad. The loss of 20 or 30 scientists who emigrate is not likely to cause a significant damage to the scientific structure of a developed country because they represent only a small fraction of a large skilled scientific community. The same number, however, represents a major slice of the competence available in developing countries.

Table 9

Number of citations per ind iv idua l (1981 - 1993)

N u m b e r o f Authors c i ta t ions n %

0 23,312 44.1

1 - 10 20,301 38.4

11 - 20 3,867 7.3

21 - 30 1,665 3.2

31 - 40 932 1.8

41 - 50 680 1.3

51 - 60 389 0.7

6 1 - 7 0 269 0.5

71 - 80 207 0.4

8 1 - 9 0 174 0.3

91 - 100 145 0.3

101 - 200 585 1.1

> 200 282 0.5

Total 52,808 100.0

Number of a u t h o r s inc ludes non -Braz i l i ans

publ ica t ion . A s s h o w n in T a b l e 5, 26 .6% of

inc lude i n t e r n a t i o n a l c o - a u t h o r s h i p .

as well as Braz i l i ans o n e a c h

all pub l i c a t i ons in the d a t a b a n k

Conclusions

Brazilian science is mostly concentrated in the universities and has been growing

at a fast pace since 1988. In accordance with worldwide trends, publications in the

area of life sciences are predominant in Brazil. In medicine and in biomedical

sciences, emphasis seems to be directed to local issues such as tropical diseases. 7 In



contrast, the scientific production in earth science and environment is quite low, a situation that raises concern. Little is known about the Amazon rain forest, the

largest virgin forest in the world. The size of the Brazilian Amazon forest is estimated to be 3.5 million km 2 which represents about 41% of the Brazilian

territory. It is difficult to foresee a suitable national policy for preservation and use of

the large reserves found in the Amazon without the adequate knowledge of the different geological and environmental features of the region.

This work was supported by grants from Funda~io de Amparo A Pesquisa do Rio de Janeiro and from the Programa de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Technol6gico, CAPES/MEC-Formaf~o de Recursos Humanos em Educaf~o para a CiSncia. J. L. is a recipient of a fellowship from Coordena~io de Aperfeiqoamento de Nivel Superior - CAPES. The authors are grateful to Dr. Martha Sorenson for the helpful discussion of the manuscript.

References

1. B.R. MARTIN, J. IRVINE, F. NARIN, C. STERRITr, The continuing decline of British science, Nature, 330 (1987) 123-126.

2. L. DE MEIS, P. H. LONGO, E. B. M. FALCAO, The learning process in science: A study among Brazilian biochemists, Biochemical Education, 17 (1989) 127-132.

3. L. DE MEIS, P. H. LONGO, The training of Brazilian biochemists in Brazil and in developed countries: Costs and benefits, Biochemical Education, 18 (1990) 182-188.

4. T. APPENZELLER, Science in Latin America. Publication trends: Uneven growth, Science, 267 (1995) 807 - 808.

5. E. GA~HELD, M. V. M~.IN, H. SMALL, Citation data as science indicators, In: Toward a Metric of Science: The Advent of Science Indicators, Y. EL~a~A, J. LEDERBER6, R. K. MEgTEN, A. T H A r 1 6 5 H. Z U C K E ~ (Eds), John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York, 1978, pp. 179-207.

6. G. L~WSON, A. FAWC~'r-JoN~, C. K~SLER, Latin American scientific output 1986-91 and international co-authorship patterns, Scientometrics, 27 (1993) 317-336.

7. E. M>a~SHALL, Brazil at a glance, Science, 267 (1995) 811-814. 8. R. GUIM.~a~ES, Diret6rio dos grupos de pesquisa no Brasil, Conselho Nacion~l de Desenvolvimento

Cientifico e Tecnol6gico, Brasflia, 1994, pp. 11-30. 9. Relat6rio estatlstico, Minist~rio da Ci~ncia e Tecnologia, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento

Cientifico e Tecnol6gico e Instituto Brasileiro de Informa~o em Ci~ncia e Tecnologia, Brasflia, 1994, pp. 38.

10. L. DE MEIS, R. C. P. MAC~DO, L. FONSBZA, P. LUSTOSA, M. T. C~D~P,A, Cienciametria y evaluaciones por los propios investigadores, Interciencia, 17 (1992) 40-43.


a profile of science in brazil

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