Change in the publishing regime in Latin America: from a local to universal journal,Archivos de investigación Médica/Archives of Medical Research (1970–2014)

This study addresses an early case of an association between a local journal and a commercial publisher in Latin America striving to improve quality. The two journals examined are Archivos de Investigación Médica (AIM), 1970–1991 and its continuation as Archives of Medical Research (AMR), 1992–2014. The aim is to characterize and compare the publishing policies and patterns of scientific communication and bibliometric indicators developed under the two different types of publication: AIM as a source of local dissemination and the commercially circulated AMR. Publishing policies, production, and citations were identified in accordance with coverage by the Web of Science and Scopus indexes. The papers and citations were grouped into three categories according to the author´s affiliation: local, regional, and external. This categorization resulted in different combinations of correlations between cited and citing papers, in addition to a distribution of collaborative production and citations by country organized by continent. The comparison of results reveals two successful publishing projects; however, editorial practices pose an irreconcilable situation between the AIM objectives as a regional journal and AMR objectives as a mainstream journal, according with dominant indicators of international competition. Some implications of this situation are discussed in the context of Latin American and Caribbean journals.     

Reflections on the institutionalization process of scientific research in Latin America: the case of Cinvestav

Scientometrics - Consolidation of the scientific activity in Latin American research centers has been a matter of serious concern in recent years. In the present study we use a data set of the WoS...     

Emergence of modern scientific discourse in the American continent: knowledge claims in the discovery of Erythronium/Vanadium in Mexico (1802–1832)

In the present paper, we study the discovery of the chemical element number 23, Erythronium/Vanadium (E/V), as an early example of the modern process of validating knowledge claims in México. We examined the published work between 1802 and 1832 of Andrés Manuel del Río (AMR) in the Royal Mining Seminar of México and contrasted the styles of argument and forms of certification between his teaching and experimental writings concerning his claim to the paternity of E/V discovery. We also analyze the respective papers of European authors that replicated, rediscovered and certified AMR’s finding. We use a combination of bibliometric, sociotechnical network and literary critical analysis in order to show that the certification of E/V spawned an emerging mode for producing and validating new knowledge in the American continent and particularly in México. In turn, this approach supports AMR’s claim to the discovery of E/V from the production process of the lead brown ore in Zimapán, México.

     

The expansion of modern science through the Catalog of Scientific Papers,XIX century: the Latin American presence

Scientometrics - In the second half of the nineteenth century, the development of bibliographic tools increased: journals, catalogs, and classifications, which helped shape a world scientific order...     

Determinants of the emergence of modern scientific knowledge in mineralogy (Mexico, 1975–1849): a geohistoriometric approach

Scientometrics - There is increasing interest in rethinking the history of science according to the geographical locations in which production of scientific knowledge occurs. This movement is...     

Publication and citation patterns of Latin American &; Caribbean journals in the SCI and SSCI from 1995 to 2004

Impact factors, publication-citation patterns and growth dynamics were analyzed for the Latin America and the Caribbean journals covered by the Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Science Citation Index from 1995–2003. Two main journal groups were identified: those publishing mainly in English with substantial contributions from outside the region, and those publishing in local languages, principally by the local community and on subjects of local interest. We found little inter-citation among the local papers while the highest number of citations by extra-regional authors was to papers published in English. Quantitative indicators show that LA-C journals are better positioned in the mainstream literature than ever before.     

Publication and citation patterns of the Mexican contribution to a “Big Science” discipline: Elementary particle physics

The publication and citation patterns of the Mexican community in elementary particle physics (MEPP) were determined by bibliometric analysis of the scientific production and citations registered in the SPIRES-HEP system from 1971 to 2000. All papers, both citing and cited, were classified as theoretical, phenomenological or experimental according to the type of study carried out and citing papers as local (Mexican) or foreign. The growth dynamics of the citation patterns over the thirty-year period was also studied. Results show that the Mexican scientific community in EPP follow the pre-publication and pre-citation communication patterns typical of a Big Science field. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Emerging roles of regional journals in the accreditation of knowledge in tropical medicine: Biomédica and Memorias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, 2007–2015

In the financial market, many fixed-income analysts focus on trajectories of the hotspots. However, limited attention has been paid to the quantitative and qualitative evolution in a rapidly changing research field of fixed-income securities. This paper identifies intellectual turning points and emerging trends in the fixed-income securities field by using bibliometric methods, visualizing complicated networks including co-keyword networks, journal co-citation networks. Highly cited terms, categories, countries and institutes are detected and discussed. By using all 5915 publications published between 1997 and 2016, recorded in SCI core collection and SSCI in fixed-income securities domain and their references (101911), it can be conducted from this research that 10 top journals in the fixed-income field. The output of this article also shows the pioneer authors, the leading institutes and leading countries and regions, and what’s more, the trend of research in fixed-income securities domain. It could possibly be a valuable source for academics and practitioners working in the field of fixed-income securities.     

Growth of the number of indexed journals of Latin America and the Caribbean: the effect on the impact of each country

The number of LA–C indexed journals in WoS has increased from 69 to 248 titles in just a period of four years (2006–2009). This unprecedented growth is related to a change in the editorial policy of WoS rather than to a change in the LA–C scientific community. We find that in the LA–C region, Brazil had the largest increase in its WoS production that also corresponded to a large increase in its production in its indexed local journals. As a consequence, Portuguese has been promoted to the second scientific language, only after English, in the LA–C production in WoS. However, while the Brazilian production in its local journals represents about one quarter of its whole WoS production, it shows a rather little effect on the respective number of citations. The rest of the LA–C countries represented in WoS still show very low levels in production and impact. Scopus has also enlarged considerably the database’s coverage of LA–C journals but with a steady growth in the period considered in this study.     

Enriching knowledge production patterns of Mexican physics in particles and fields

A detailed analysis of the research carried out in Mexico in the physics specialty of particles and fields (MPPF) reveals the way the current production and citation patterns evolved over a period of 60 years. The basis for the analysis were the publications and citations registered in the Stanford Public Information REtrieval System—High Energy Physics (SPIRES) from 1970 to 2007. The historical coverage afforded by the Science Citation Index provided supplementary data from 1948 to 1979. Papers were classified into five research types: theoretical, phenomenological, experimental, cosmological, and other, while citations were identified as coming from: published or unpublished sources. Results show that the development of MPPF emerged from traditional theoretical and phenomenological research and that the most notable changes taking place in production and impact are associated with the community’s involvement in more productive and more internationally visible research practices, characteristic of large international collaborations, leaders in experimental physics and in the authorship of review papers.