**Abstract**

The article presents an analysis of scientific production and impact among 35 most productive countries in the world. In the period 2000–2016, these countries produced 92% of the world publications. A correlation of international collaboration and scientific impact is shown. Differently from this pattern, Brazil shows high quantitative performance but low scientific impact, which is attributed to its low level of international collaboration. By contrast, instead of a generalized cooperation, as many undeveloped countries do, Brazil uses its internal effort to explore cooperation in a more symmetrical manner. Thus, in several areas, Brazil occupies a prominent position, including technological sectors, enabling it to occupy the eighth world's economy position. The data confirm that an efficient internal scientific effort combined with well-balanced international cooperation can be more effective to enable countries to achieve higher levels of development in order to meet their technical and socioeconomic challenges. Brazil was able to reach the first step but did not follow the same track concerning higher scientific impact.

**Keywords:** scientometric analysis, international scientific collaboration, impact, BRICS, Latin American countries
