The relevance and recognition of Latin American science. Introduction to the fourth issue of CBP-Latin America

Abstract

Although the number of science and engineering (S&E) publications produced in Latin America grew exponentially over the past 15 years, the investment in science and the number of full time researchers did not grow at a comparable rate. Moreover, Latin American science is handicapped by constrained resources and access to information, higher costs of research, English-language barriers and brain-drain. One possible explanation for the observed rise in paper numbers, therefore, is that Latin American scientists have increased production, perhaps at the cost of quality. As an alternative, Latin America authors may have increased production while maintaining quality (e.g., through creativity, intense work and enhancement of international cooperation). Our aim is to verify which of these interpretations best applies for the field of comparative biochemistry and physiology (CBP). To achieve this goal, we compared the impact indicators of two randomly selected samples of authors (n=20; all with 8 to 30 years of scientific production), one from Latin America and another from developed countries. For additional comparison, we included also a group of twelve highly cited and recognized CBP researchers. We used Hirsch's indexes (h and m) as main indicators of performance, but compared also classical bibliometric indexes such as total number of citations, total number of papers and the ratio of citation per paper (CpP). The mean of most indexes were not significantly different between the two groups of regular CBP researchers, except for CpP, which was 1.7-fold higher in authors from developed countries. As expected, both groups had mean indicators well below those from the sample of highly cited researchers (average h values for top and regular CBP researchers were 37.3+/-3.0 and 11.4+/-0.9, respectively). Considering that Hirsch's indexes are more suitable indicators of performance than CpP, we conclude that Latin American CBP researchers, despite handicaps, perform similarly to those in developed countries. The forth special issue of Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology ("The Face of Latin American Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology") celebrates, with 24 new manuscripts from Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Chile, the diversity of biological science in Latin America.