**3. Results and discussion**

Despite its late entry into the world's science circle, in the last decades, Brazil has been experiencing extraordinary growth in the production of indexed scientific articles published in periodicals with international qualification. In the 1960s, the

**99**

**Figure 2.**

*Estatísticas CNPq. http://estatico.cnpq.br/.*

*Contrasting High Scientific Production with Low International Collaboration and Scientific…*

average of scientific publications published in periodicals indexed in the database of the former Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was 52 scientific articles annually; in 1970 there were only 64 articles, representing 0.019% of world production, jumping to 10,555 complete articles in 2001 [17, 18]. At present (2012–2016), Brazil publishes on average ca. 50,000 articles per year. **Figure 1** shows the evolution of the Brazilian scientific production covering all the 12 trimesters (from 1981 to 1983 up to the present 2014–2016). The data report the accumulated growth of published articles as well as that of accumulated citations. The amount of documents published in the period accounts for a total of 636,000, while that of citations reached more than 7 million, which indicates an average of 11.1 citations per article (impact) for the whole period. This manner of representing the mean impact is thought by the authors to be more adequate than that commonly used (year by year) way because, as it is well known, citations of recent papers (less than 8–10 years) are small, resulting in a low index of the impact factor, a common feature applied to all

As seen in **Table 1**, except for the multidisciplinary field, an expressive growth

The evolution of Brazilian scientific production occurred within a period of only 35 years and allowed Brazil to be included, in 2009, among the top 20 scientifically most productive countries. This time period is coincident with that followed after the foundation of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT, today MCTIC) in 1985. The rapid development of scientific activities in Brazil was based on the establishment of a vigorous postgraduate program [15], which began in the late 1960s and resulted in the consolidation of the current 37,640 research groups registered in the country and covering all scientific areas [20]. **Figure 2** illustrates the recent growth of the Brazilian graduate programs, and **Figure 3** illustrates the evolution and consolidation of research groups. As it can be seen, there is a parallelism among the indicators of the three growth curves covering the period studied. This growth also correlates well with increasing

*Correlation between the number of graduate programs and the number of research groups in* 

*Brazil—2000–2016. Source: CAPES. Geocapes. http://geocapes.capes.gov.br/geocapes2/ and CNPq (2017).* 

is found in all research areas in Brazil. On average, between the first triennial (1981–1983) and the last one (2014–2016), there was a growth of 20-fold for the total number of articles, where some areas such as materials science (123-fold), computer science (73-fold), environment and ecology (63-fold), and neuroscience and behavior (53-fold) show much higher growth. It is also seen in the table that the other indicators, the impact relative to world (IRW), increased from 0.65 to 0.86

and the percentage of top 1% articles from 0.4 to 0.8%.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.85825*

fields and world science [19].

### *Contrasting High Scientific Production with Low International Collaboration and Scientific… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.85825*

average of scientific publications published in periodicals indexed in the database of the former Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was 52 scientific articles annually; in 1970 there were only 64 articles, representing 0.019% of world production, jumping to 10,555 complete articles in 2001 [17, 18]. At present (2012–2016), Brazil publishes on average ca. 50,000 articles per year. **Figure 1** shows the evolution of the Brazilian scientific production covering all the 12 trimesters (from 1981 to 1983 up to the present 2014–2016). The data report the accumulated growth of published articles as well as that of accumulated citations. The amount of documents published in the period accounts for a total of 636,000, while that of citations reached more than 7 million, which indicates an average of 11.1 citations per article (impact) for the whole period. This manner of representing the mean impact is thought by the authors to be more adequate than that commonly used (year by year) way because, as it is well known, citations of recent papers (less than 8–10 years) are small, resulting in a low index of the impact factor, a common feature applied to all fields and world science [19].

As seen in **Table 1**, except for the multidisciplinary field, an expressive growth is found in all research areas in Brazil. On average, between the first triennial (1981–1983) and the last one (2014–2016), there was a growth of 20-fold for the total number of articles, where some areas such as materials science (123-fold), computer science (73-fold), environment and ecology (63-fold), and neuroscience and behavior (53-fold) show much higher growth. It is also seen in the table that the other indicators, the impact relative to world (IRW), increased from 0.65 to 0.86 and the percentage of top 1% articles from 0.4 to 0.8%.

The evolution of Brazilian scientific production occurred within a period of only 35 years and allowed Brazil to be included, in 2009, among the top 20 scientifically most productive countries. This time period is coincident with that followed after the foundation of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT, today MCTIC) in 1985. The rapid development of scientific activities in Brazil was based on the establishment of a vigorous postgraduate program [15], which began in the late 1960s and resulted in the consolidation of the current 37,640 research groups registered in the country and covering all scientific areas [20]. **Figure 2** illustrates the recent growth of the Brazilian graduate programs, and **Figure 3** illustrates the evolution and consolidation of research groups. As it can be seen, there is a parallelism among the indicators of the three growth curves covering the period studied. This growth also correlates well with increasing

### **Figure 2.**

*Correlation between the number of graduate programs and the number of research groups in Brazil—2000–2016. Source: CAPES. Geocapes. http://geocapes.capes.gov.br/geocapes2/ and CNPq (2017). Estatísticas CNPq. http://estatico.cnpq.br/.*

*Scientometrics Recent Advances*

co-authoring.

6.International collaboration: Number of documents in international

**doc.**

7.Percentage of international collaboration: Proportion of documents published in international co-authoring in relation to the total number of publications.

**No. Areas 1981–1983 2014–2016 Growth** 

**IRW % Doc. in top 1%**

 Agricultural sciences 700 0.294 0.6 13,181 0.517 0.6 17.8 Biology and biochemistry 550 0.724 0.0 7461 0.907 0.4 12.6 Chemistry 533 0.822 0.4 10,824 1.066 0.1 19.3 Clinical medicine 1811 0.344 0.4 33,287 0.846 1.1 17.4 Computer science 43 0.866 0.0 3169 0.581 0.5 72.7 Economics and business 42 1.155 0.0 1154 0.402 0.7 26.5 Engineering 189 0.589 0.5 7562 0.777 0.5 39.0 Environment/ecology 91 0.748 0.0 5804 1.152 1.3 62.8 Geosciences 185 0.905 0.5 2961 0.916 0.6 15.0 Immunology 86 1.680 0.0 3772 1.204 1.2 42.9 Materials science 38 0.475 2.6 4697 0.826 0.2 122.6 Mathematics 241 0.993 1.2 3179 0.398 0.4 12.2 Microbiology 82 1.401 0.0 2913 1.089 0.8 34.5

15 Multidisciplinary 282 0.066 0.7 232 0.931 1.3 −0.2

 Physics 723 1.210 0.6 8146 1.589 1.8 10.3 Plant and animal science 659 0.530 0.2 17,719 0.534 0.6 25.9 Psychiatry/psychology 115 0.214 0.0 2433 0.866 1.5 20.2 Social sciences, general 363 0.483 1.4 6837 0.381 0.7 17.8 Space science 109 1.429 0.0 1493 2.676 3.4 12.7 **Brazil 7255 0.649 0.4 149,787 0.862 0.8 19.6** *Comparison of the two distant triennials: 1981–1983 and 2014–2016. Source: exported date 2017-10-13. InCites* 

**N. doc.**

184 0.949 0.0 4244 1.105 0.7 22.1

100 1.790 1.0 5400 0.987 0.6 53.0

129 1.070 0.0 4990 0.765 0.5 37.7

**N. documents** **IRW %** 

**doc. in top 1%** **number** 

Despite its late entry into the world's science circle, in the last decades, Brazil has been experiencing extraordinary growth in the production of indexed scientific articles published in periodicals with international qualification. In the 1960s, the

*dataset updated 2017-09-23. Includes Web of Science content indexed through 2017-07-31.*

**98**

**Table 1.**

**3. Results and discussion**

*Growth of the Brazilian scientific production of all ESI areas.*

14 Molecular biology and genetics

16 Neuroscience and behavior

17 Pharmacology and toxicology

### **Figure 3.**

*Correlation between % international collaboration and citation impact of the 35 countries with high scientific productivity (2000–2016). Source: ESI-InCites dataset updated 2017-04-15. Includes Web of Science content indexed through 2017-02-03.*

funding from the federal agencies CAPES, CNPq, and FINEP and especially with that of state agencies FAPESP, FAPEMIG, and FAPERJ in the period (data not shown). It was also positively influenced by the availability of The Portal of Periodicals by CAPES in 2001 [18].

In order to compare Brazil with other countries, in this study we also explore some characteristics of world scientific production in the period 2000–2016. **Table 1** lists the 35 countries with the largest number of articles in WoS, i.e., countries with a contribution of at least 0.5% of the world production which account for 92.2% of the world total scientific production in the period (**Table 2**). Brazil presently ranks 14th. While the table includes all BRICS countries, from Latin America only Brazil and Mexico appear. Other quantitative and qualitative bibliometric studies are also presented in **Table 2**. In the period 2000–2016, the world scientific production reached 26,103,636 articles, while the 35 most productive countries totaled 28,671,597 documents. This quantitative artifact is due to the phenomenon known as double counting [14, 18], which occurs, in this comparison, whenever the sum of publications is counted country by country, since articles with co-authorship including authors from two or more countries are counted at least twice. It was found in a previous study [14], covering the period 2011–2014, that double counting corresponded, in the period, to 33.1% of world production. Here, double counting of articles reaches 16.1% (**Table 2**). This discrepancy is due to the coverage for a longer period of years in the present article, since it is known that the indexes of international collaboration that affect double counting have been increasing in recent years. After correction, the total of articles in the 35 countries of **Table 1** corresponds, in the period, to 24,055,470 or 92.2% of the world total without double counting. Therefore, the data indicate that the countries in **Table 2**, which represent 17% of world countries, constitute an adequate sample for the present bibliometric study.

**Table 2** also shows a high percentage of cited articles (average of 73.3%), with small individual variation: 65.9% (Russia) to 79.4% (Finland), all above the world average 66.5%. These indices are reflected in a high total of citations which in turn produces an average impact index of 16.3 which is 1.2 times higher than the world average index (13.5).

**101**

**Country** United States

China Germany

England

Japan France Canada

Italy Spain Australia

India Korea Netherlands

Brazil Russia Switzerland

Sweden Taiwan Turkey

Poland Belgium Scotland

Iran

22 23

259,961

1,834,821

68.7

7.1

266,900

5,541,755

73.7

20.8

16 17 18 19 20 21

335,616

6,431,262

75.7

19.2

353,032

3,498,064

70.7

9.9

378,817

2,963,670

65.9

7.8

386,178

4,638,999

77.3

12.0

407,754

8,438,475

78.1

20.7

448,485

10,283,870

76.1

22.9

13 14 15

510,662

4,039,770

65.9

7.9

539,049

4,997,160

69.5

9.3

629,561

13,319,873

75.3

21.2

10 11 12

691,631

7,650,919

72.0

11.1

713,637

6,808,521

72.2

9.5

822,175

13,371,337

73.1

16.3

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

837,380

12,579,920

73.9

15.0

1,051,109

16,907,001

74.1

16.1

1,109,651

20,003,328

72.9

18.0

1,231,668

22,351,252

75.9

18.2

1,555,919

22,874,614

74.5

14.7

1,814,621

32,931,581

73.2

18.2

1,829,635

34,150,179

70.1

18.7

2,275,635

23,014,726

73.9

10.1

7,923,518

150,865,186

67.5

**Rank**

**Articles**

**Times cited**

**% Doc. Cited**

**Citation impact**

19.0

**International collaborations**

2,038,606

537,660 768,571 824,910 368,209 596,112 484,151 430,418 345,891 354,313 148,773 182,056 320,978 158,083 168,817 279,150 222,203

89,180 68,318 122,718 197,217 116,315 55,688

**% International collaborations**

25.7 23.6 42.0 45.5 23.7 48.4 43.6 41.0 41.3 43.1 20.9

26.3

51.0

29.3

33.1

62.2

54.5

23.1

18.0

34.8

58.8

43.6

21.4

*Contrasting High Scientific Production with Low International Collaboration and Scientific…*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.85825*


## *Contrasting High Scientific Production with Low International Collaboration and Scientific… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.85825*

*Scientometrics Recent Advances*

Periodicals by CAPES in 2001 [18].

**Figure 3.**

*indexed through 2017-02-03.*

funding from the federal agencies CAPES, CNPq, and FINEP and especially with that of state agencies FAPESP, FAPEMIG, and FAPERJ in the period (data not shown). It was also positively influenced by the availability of The Portal of

*Correlation between % international collaboration and citation impact of the 35 countries with high scientific productivity (2000–2016). Source: ESI-InCites dataset updated 2017-04-15. Includes Web of Science content* 

In order to compare Brazil with other countries, in this study we also explore some characteristics of world scientific production in the period 2000–2016. **Table 1** lists the 35 countries with the largest number of articles in WoS, i.e., countries with a contribution of at least 0.5% of the world production which account for 92.2% of the world total scientific production in the period (**Table 2**). Brazil presently ranks 14th. While the table includes all BRICS countries, from Latin America only Brazil and Mexico appear. Other quantitative and qualitative bibliometric studies are also presented in **Table 2**. In the period 2000–2016, the world scientific production reached 26,103,636 articles, while the 35 most productive countries totaled 28,671,597 documents. This quantitative artifact is due to the phenomenon known as double counting [14, 18], which occurs, in this comparison, whenever the sum of publications is counted country by country, since articles with co-authorship including authors from two or more countries are counted at least twice. It was found in a previous study [14], covering the period 2011–2014, that double counting corresponded, in the period, to 33.1% of world production. Here, double counting of articles reaches 16.1% (**Table 2**). This discrepancy is due to the coverage for a longer period of years in the present article, since it is known that the indexes of international collaboration that affect double counting have been increasing in recent years. After correction, the total of articles in the 35 countries of **Table 1** corresponds, in the period, to 24,055,470 or 92.2% of the world total without double counting. Therefore, the data indicate that the countries in **Table 2**, which represent 17% of world countries, constitute an adequate sample for the

**Table 2** also shows a high percentage of cited articles (average of 73.3%), with small individual variation: 65.9% (Russia) to 79.4% (Finland), all above the world average 66.5%. These indices are reflected in a high total of citations which in turn produces an average impact index of 16.3 which is 1.2 times higher than the world

**100**

present bibliometric study.

average index (13.5).

