Reassessing Latin America's Research Capacity: A Regional Comparison Using UNESCO Indicators

Title: Reassessing Latin America’s Research Capacity: A Regional Comparison Using UNESCO IndicatorsAuthors: Scott Matthew Brown, Theany Calderon, and Arleen HernandezInstitution: University of Puerto RicoContact: [e-mail] Date: 2025-05-11 This dataset and project description accompanies the study "Reassessing Latin America’s Research Capacity: A Regional Comparison Using UNESCO Indicators." The study presents a novel AI-augmented, open-source research workflow developed at a bankrupt public university in Puerto Rico. It documents how a lone faculty member, using tools such as ChatGPT, Google Colab, and public data from UNESCO and the World Bank, built a high-productivity research pipeline that generated 40 unique manuscripts and 77 submissions across 53 journals within just 55 days. The project combines autoethnographic artifact analysis with regional slope regressions of UNESCO R&D and education data, focusing on five indicators: GERD (% of GDP) Government Education Spending (% of total budget) Tertiary Enrollment (Gross HE enrollment rate) Researchers per Capita (Public Sector) Researchers per Capita (Private Sector) The analysis highlights statistically significant growth in Latin America's research workforce—particularly in the private sector—despite stagnant investment trends, challenging assumptions that elite R1 infrastructure is necessary for research productivity. Findings suggest the emergence of a “Post-R1 Researcher” archetype, capable of scholarly contribution through digital improvisation, methodological agility, and cognitive empowerment via AI tools. The full manuscript includes: Background on academic precarity in Latin America Methodology for bottom-up digital workflow construction and UNESCO slope analysis Detailed regression slope results across six global regions (Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, Other) Theoretical implications for institutional theory, capacity-building, and reverse innovation Key empirical finding: Latin America shows strong growth in researcher density, particularly in private-sector positions, without corresponding increases in government R&D or education spending. Meanwhile, North America shows significant decline in public investment metrics, potentially due to political retrenchment. These trends point to a decentralizing model of knowledge production increasingly shaped by open infrastructure and generative AI rather than institutional abundance. This Zenodo archive contains the full dataset and code needed to replicate the study’s quantitative findings, in accordance with FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).