The scenario of Brazilian health sciences in the period of 1981 to 1995

Ensuing a previous study of Brazilian sciences production for the period 1981–95, health sciences were taken apart for scrutiny. ISI data was obtained in an aggregate format comprising 40 health research fields recording their yearly number of papers, proportion out of the country, proportion out of the field, and impact relative to field. Simple linear regression was used to examine time trends in production and impact of research fields. A complementary variable representing growth trend was computed as the regression slope. Data were then analysed by means of Factor and Correspondence Analysis. Results allowed the production of location maps of research fields so that hierarchy and relationships among them could be examined in the form of geometric distances. It was found that health sciences represent 42% of the Brazilian scientific production and that their trends in both production and impact do not differ from other sciences taken altogether. Measurements of production were found negatively correlated with impact and factor analysis revealed that the major distinction between fields is attributable to production (64% of measurement variations against 19% due to impact). Experimental Biology & Medicine largely exceeds other fields in production, though at ordinary levels of impact. Correspondence analysis refined the study of impact allowing the identification of the best performers as Clinical Immunology & Infectious Diseases, Environmental & Social Medicine, and Radiology & Nuclear Medicine. The information provided can advise national policy makers on science & technology about priorities concerning the improvement of the country's competitiveness.     

A comparison between domestic and international publications in Brazilian psychiatry

This article assesses the Brazilian psychiatric production and compares the numbers of articles published between 1981 and 1995 in Brazilian domestic journals and published in international journals. From the total number of articles analyzed, 87.2% were published in domestic journals. These probably will never reach the international scientific community. From the articles published in Brazil, 56.8% were review and opinion articles, while from the articles published in international journals, 69.8% were research articles. Publications in both Brazilian and international journals included few prospective research studies and research reports dealing with bipolar disorder and cocaine use. On the other hand, alcohol use disorder and major depressive disorder were the most commonly studied clinical fields published both in domestic and in international psychiatric journals. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A new indicator for international visibility: exploring Brazilian scientific community

Brazilian science has increased fast during the last decades. An example is the increasing in the country’s share in the world’s scientific publication within the main international databases. But what is the actual weight of international publications to the whole Brazilian productivity? In order to respond this question, we have elaborated a new indicator, the International Publication Ratio (IPR). The data source was Lattes Database, a database organized by one of the main Brazilian S&;T funding agency, which encompasses publication data from 1997 to 2004 of about 51,000 Brazilian researchers. Influences of distinct parameters, such as sectors, fields, career age and gender, are analyzed. We hope the data presented may help S&;T managers and other S&;T interests to better understand the complexity under the concept scientific productivity, especially in peripheral countries in science, such as Brazil.     

Brazilian privatization in international perspective: the rocky path from state capitalism to regulatory capitalism

This paper describes the history, size and scope of the publicenterprise sector in Brazil, using a variety of indicators anddrawing from different interpretative sources. It shows thatat least until the 1970s, state-owned enterprises contributedto the industrialization process and to fiscal results. Thepaper sets out the political and institutional framework inwhich privatizations are implemented, compares its main featureswith those prevailing in some other countries, and providesan updated account of state sell-offs. The consequences of privatizationin terms of corporate governance are analyzed. In Brazil, theprivate sector has been negatively affected by the post-1991opening of the economy, which has also coincided with generationaltransition in most family-owned groups. Domestic financial institutionshave partly filled the void left after the state retrenchment,but the parallel strengthening of market mechanisms in the allocationof financial resources has trailed behind, posing major policyissues.     

Retraction of global scientific publications from 2001 to 2010

Retraction is a self-cleaning activity done in the global science community. In this study, the retraction of global scientific publications from 2001 to 2010 was quantitatively analyzed by using the Science Citation Index Expanded. The results indicated that the number of retractions increased faster compared to the number of global scientific publications. Three very different patterns of retraction existed in each field. In the multi-disciplinary category and in the life sciences, retraction was relatively active. The impact factor strongly correlated with the number of retractions, but did not significantly correlate with the rate of retraction. Although the increases in the number of publications in China, India, and South Korea were faster, their retraction activities were higher than the worldwide average level.     

International alignment and scientific regard as macro-indicators for international comparisons of publications

Many international comparisons of the publication performance at themacro level are based on direct counts of citation frequencies in the ScienceCitation Index. However, these comparisons may reveal a significant negativelanguage bias for non-English-speaking countries, or other selection biases,which can be illustrated by the relation between research budgets of scientificinstitutions and SCI publications. Against this background, a two-dimensionalrepresentation, specifying for the international alignment of the nationalpublications and the journal-standardized citation impact, proves to be amore appropriate indicator base to assess the citation performance of countriessuch as Germany. In the light of a ten countries' benchmark, time seriesof these indicators for the nineties show a considerable impact of the Germanunification with a recent trend towards an adaptation of publication behaviourin East Germany towards the Western patterns. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Patent-related activities in Serbia from 1921 to 1995

In 1883 the Kingdom of Serbia was a co-founder of the well-known Paris Convention dedicated to protection of industrial property. This paper presents the analysis of inventive activities in Serbia in the period from 1921 to 1995. The available patent statistics is analyzed from the aspects of: (a) patenting structure according to the International Patent Classification sections, and (b) patenting dynamics. The findings of analysis indicate: (1) the fields in which technology development potentials are created in Serbia, and (2) the variations in inventors' productivity as a direct consequence of the variation in the country's innovation policy.     

Bibliometric analysis of the Czech research publications from 1994 to 2005

We have compared bibliometric data of Czech research papers generated from 1994 to 2005 with papers from six other EU countries: Austria, Hungary, Poland, Finland, Ireland and Greece. The Czech Republic ranked the fifth in number of papers per thousand inhabitants and the sixth in number of citations/paper. Relatively the most cited were Czech papers from fields Engineering and Mathematics ranking the third, and Computer Science, Environment/Ecology and Molecular Biology ranking the fourth among 7 EU countries. Our analysis indicates that Czech research is lagging behind the leading EU countries, but its output is proportional to the R&D expenses.     

Effects of journal choice on the visibility of scientific publications: a comparison between subscription-based and full Open Access models

Scientometrics - This study analyses the performance of journals and publications based on their type of archiving policies. The main objective is the assessment of the feasibility of the journal...     

Open access initiatives in European universities: analysis of their implementation and the visibility of publications in the YERUN network

Scientometrics - In this paper, the authors analyse the open access (OA) output of the universities in YERUN (the Young European Research Universities Network) and their institutional documentation...     

Brazilian production in biochemistry. The question of international versus domestic publication

This work describes a bibliometric survey on scientific production in biochemistry originated from 19 Brazilian institutions, which comprised 487 staff investigators, 70–80% of investigation-active biochemists. These investigators published about 3000 papers in international journals in the period 1970–1985, which generated about 17000 citations from 1983 to 1987, according to the Institute for Scientific Information data base. In this survey we distinguished what we called endogenous articles (produced in Brazil) from exogenous articles (produced abroad by Brazilian biochemists), in terms of the spectrum of journals in which they were published and the number of citations generated per article. A comparison was also performed for the two groups in terms of the impact factor generated by Brazilian articles in a given journal versus the expected impact factor for all articles published in that journal. In all cases we detected a certain disadvantage for endogenous articles, the possible reason of which is discussed. Biochemistry is one of the scientific areas in Brazil in which the investigators make a large effort to publish in international journals. We observed differences in the impact generated by these international papers, when biochemistry was compared with other areas which exhibit the same tendency towards an international output. From these observations we discuss the pertinence of publishing for an international audience as opposed in domestic journals.Paper presented at the International Conference on Science Indicators for Developing Countries, Paris, 15–19 October, 1990.     

Influence of international authorship on citations in Brazilian medical journals: a bibliometric analysis

Scientometrics - The challenge of increasing the impact of regional journals has received much attention. While funding and research agencies require the acceptance of papers from foreign authors...     

A bibliometric analysis of physics publications from Middle Eastern countries

I studied the publication efforts in physics in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey in terms of a total number of 2368 papers from these countries in international journals for 1990–1994. I looked for the national contributions, main subjects of activity, journal preferences of authors, and co-authorship patterns. Comparisons show that physicists from Egypt and Turkey combined, produced 75% of the total publication output. Half of the Egyptian papers went only to 16% of a set of 115 journals that publish papers from this country. Such a high concentration of papers in a few journals was not the case for the rest of the countries. Condensed matter physics was found to be among the three most active subjects for the countries except Iran. Iranian authors tended to be more active in astrosciences, and nuclear science and technology. I found a change in the publication patterns of the Middle Eastern physicists in the direction of decreasing isolation and increasing collaboration.     

The increase in the rate of publications originating from Turkey

The scientific publications of 231 chemistry professors employed at Turkish Universities are studied for a period of 10 years. The quantitative as well as the qualitative aspects of the trends in the scientific information output of this group are analyzed in order to evaluate the underlying facts of the recent increase in the number of publications coming from Turkey. The selected group is a fairly good representative of the Turkish scientific community and our observations could be generalized to describe the development of basic sciences in Turkey. We conclude that even though there exists a serious increase in the scientific output from Turkey, a rather small portion of the studied group is responsible both for high number of publications and for higher quality.     

Characterization of wastewater from the Brazilian TNT industry

The objective of this work was to characterize the effluent originating from a Brazilian TNT production industry. Analyses were performed using physical, chemical, spectroscopic and ecotoxicological assays, which demonstrated that the effluent had a significant pollution potential, mainly due to the low pH and high concentration of TNT (156+/-10mgL(-1)). The results also demonstrated that the effluent presented significant acute toxicity, and could cause countless damages if released into the receiving body without being adequately treated first. The observed pollution potential justifies studies to evaluate treatment technologies or recover the residue generated in the TNT industry.