A genealogy of the Brazilian scientific research on freshwater fish farming by means of the academic supervision linkage

Any field of scientific knowledge undergoes maintenance and evolution. This is accomplished in a variety of ways, but especially through the training of researchers who will dedicate their scientific careers to the area of science in which they were trained. Forming this type of researcher is a process that is subordinated to the sets of rules and values of each academic community. In a simplified way, this process can be understood as one that transforms a student into a researcher who, in turn, will take on the task of forming new researchers. Thus, the academic supervision that transforms a student into a new researcher occupies a central role in the development of each field of science, and can help explain the characteristics of that field. This work examines how the field of academic research in freshwater fish farming has unfolded in Brazil. This is accomplished by making use of the links between advisor and advisee to describe the involved academic genealogy. For this, the examination used the information of Brazilian researchers, which was publicly available on the website of the National Research Council (CNPq) of Brazil. Some social network analysis techniques were employed to better qualify these descriptions for graphical display in the form of an academic genealogical tree. Through this study, descriptions were developed to point out researchers who played important roles in the training of Brazilian researchers in the field of freshwater fish farming.