Profile of the research production in Human and Social Sciences in Health and researchers’ perceptions: strides, limits, and challenges

This article aims to establish a profile of research production by professors in the field of Human and Social Sciences in Health (HSSH) in graduate studies programs in Public Health, focusing on the period from 2004 to 2012 (three consecutive three-year of the assessment by the Brazilian Graduate Studies Coordinating Board - CAPES), as well as the researchers’ views of the publishing process and the main challenges. The data sources were the CAPES assessment notebooks from 2004 to 2012 and the research output recorded in the Curriculum Lattes database for 176 professors from the HSSH field accredited in the graduate studies programs in Public Health in the same period, obtained from the ScriptLattes tool. Online questionnaires were answered anonymously by 59 researchers, besides in-depth semi-structured interviews with 19 researchers from different generations, in addition to incorporating the authors’ perceptions from both data sources on the field’s recent situation. Research output in HSSH increased by 60.49% in the production of articles and 25.22% in the production of books in the period studied (62.36% of the research output was published in the form of articles). However, the number of researchers did not increase during the period, which may be explained by the difficulty in accreditation in the graduate studies programs due to growing pressure to publish. Researchers from the field expressed dissatisfaction with various aspects of the science publishing process and the effects of CAPES assessment, including the push for “productivism”, overlooking differences between areas in research production tempos and processes, a situation that can compromise Public Health’s inherent interdisciplinarity.

本研究旨在刻画公共卫生研究生培养项目中健康人文与社会科学（Human and Social Sciences in Health, HSSH）领域教授的科研产出概况，聚焦2004至2012年（巴西研究生教育协调委员会（CAPES）连续三轮三年期评估周期），同时探讨研究者对学术发表流程的看法与主要挑战。本研究的数据来源包括2004至2012年CAPES评估档案，以及通过ScriptLattes工具获取的同期获批公共卫生研究生培养项目的176名健康人文与社会科学领域教授的Lattes简历数据库科研产出记录。此外，59名研究者匿名填写了在线问卷，研究团队还对19名来自不同代际的研究者开展了半结构化深度访谈，并纳入了两类数据源中作者对该领域近期现状的认知。本研究周期内，健康人文与社会科学（HSSH）领域的论文产出增长60.49%，著作产出增长25.22%，其中以论文形式发表的研究成果占比达62.36%。但同期研究者数量未出现增长，这或可归因于日益增长的发表压力导致公共卫生研究生培养项目的获批难度提升。该领域研究者对学术发表流程及CAPES评估的多方面影响表示不满，包括对“产出主义”的推崇、忽视不同学科领域在科研产出节奏与流程上的差异，这一现状或将损害公共卫生固有的跨学科属性。