Assessment of scientific profiles and capabilities of Ph.D. programs in Chile: A scientometric approach

It is well known that the quality of a doctorate program is related to the level of involvement of its faculty in research. Thus, we worked with the hypothesis that postulates that if the in-house scientific output of the core faculty involved in a Ph.D. program can be appraised in such a manner that the achievements render quantitative and qualitative indicators, it is possible to depict profiles amenable for comparisons. We describe the methodology, that uses performance scientometric indicators, and results obtained after studying five Ph.D. programs in the field of Cell and Molecular Biology/Biochemistry in three different Chilean universities and show that the approach serves to portray the in-house capacity of each programvis a vis national and international standards.