Brazilian Science between National and Foreign Journals: Methodology for Analyzing the Production and Impact in Emerging Scientific Communities

In recent decades, we have observed an intensification of science, technology and innovation activities in Brazil. The increase in production of scientific papers indexed in international databases, however, has not been accompanied by an equivalent increase in the impact of publications. This paper presents a methodology for analyzing production and the impact of certain research areas in Brazil related to two aspects: the origin of the journals (national or foreign) and international collaboration. These two variables were selected for being of particular importance in understanding the context of scientific production and communication in countries with emerging economies. The sample consisted of papers written by Brazilian researchers in 19 subfields of knowledge published from 2002 to 2011, totaling 85,082 papers. To calculate the impact, we adopted a normalized indicator called the relative subfield citedness (Rw) using a window of 5 years to obtain measurements evaluated in 2 different years: 2007 and 2012. The data on papers and citations were collected from the Web of Science database. From the results, we note that most of the subfields have presented, from one quinquennium to another, improved performance in the world production rankings. Regarding publication in national and foreign journals, we observed a trend in the distribution maintenance of production of the subfields based on the origin of the journal. Specifically, for impact, we identified a lower Rw pattern for Brazilian papers when they were published in national journals in all subfields. When Brazilian products are published in foreign journals, we observed a higher impact for those papers, even surpassing the average global impact in some subfields. For international collaboration, we analyzed the percentage of participation of foreign researchers and the connection between collaboration and the impact of papers, especially emphasizing the distinction of hyperauthorship papers in terms of production and impact.

近数十年来，巴西的科学、技术与创新活动呈现出愈发活跃的态势。不过，国际数据库收录的科研论文产出量提升的同时，论文的学术影响力并未实现同步增长。本研究提出一种分析巴西特定研究领域科研产出与影响力的方法，该方法围绕两大维度展开：期刊来源（国内或国外）与国际合作。选取这两项变量的原因在于，其对于理解新兴经济体国家的科研产出与学术传播语境具有至关重要的意义。本研究的样本涵盖2002年至2011年间发表的、由巴西研究者撰写的19个知识子领域的论文，总计85082篇。为计算学术影响力，本研究采用了名为相对子领域被引率（relative subfield citedness，Rw）的标准化指标，以5年为时间窗口，分别在2007年与2012年两个时间节点开展影响力测算。论文与被引数据均采集自Web of Science（科学引文索引）数据库。研究结果显示，多数知识子领域在两个五年周期内的全球科研产出排名均有所提升。就国内与国外期刊发表情况而言，各子领域的论文产出分布呈现出基于期刊来源的稳定性趋势。具体而言，在影响力层面，所有子领域的巴西研究者论文若发表于国内期刊，其Rw指标均处于较低水平。而当巴西研究者的论文发表于国外期刊时，其学术影响力则更高，部分子领域的影响力甚至超过了全球平均水平。针对国际合作维度，本研究分析了外国研究者的参与占比，以及合作模式与论文影响力之间的关联，尤其着重探讨了超大型合著论文在产出与影响力层面的特征差异。