International collaboration in Medical Research in Latin America and the Caribbean (2003–2007)

Abstract

Bibliometric techniques and social network analysis are used to define the patterns of international medical research in Latin America and the Caribbean based on information available in the Scopus database. The objective was to ascertain countries' capacity to establish intra‐ and extraregional scientific collaboration. The results show that increased output and citations in medical research have heightened the region's presence and participation in the international scientific arena. These findings may be partly influenced by the inclusion of new journals in the database and regional initiatives that may have enhanced collaboration and knowledge transfer in science. The overall rise in partnering rates is slightly greater intra‐ than extraregionally. The possible effect of geographic, idiomatic, and cultural proximity is likewise identified. The “scientific dependence” of small or developing countries would explain their high collaboration rates and impact. The evidence shows that the most productive countries draw from knowledge generated domestically or by their neighbors, which would explain why impact is so highly concentrated in the regions with the greatest output. The need to incentivize intraregional relationships must be stressed, although international initiatives should also be supported.

Virology research in a Latin American developing country: a bibliometric analysis of virology in Colombia (2000–2013)

“…It is clear that the total number of papers increased progressively during the period (r 2 = 0.9467; p < 0.001). There was a more than eightfold increase in the number of papers from 2000 (12) to 2013 (103), with the highest number of published papers in 2013 ( Figure 1A). …”

“…These first-world countries have had a significant growing share in the virology field in the last decade [4,24], which can be very useful for developing countries such as Colombia in terms in terms of reduction of transactional cost of technology transfer, communication, and quality of research. Important Latin American countries such as Brazil and Mexico are included in the top 10 collaborators, and those countries have been shown to be the most important producers of regional literature in public health registered in Scopus and to act as proxies in the network of intra-regional collaboration in different areas [25,12,11].…”

“…Regional initiatives, such as the Brazilian/Argentinean Center for Biotechnology (CABBIO), have increased the cooperation and the publication index between those countries and others from the region through the implementation of training courses in biotechnology and grant funding mainly in the Mercosur area [10,11]. The CYTED initiative (from the Spanish Programa Iberoamericano de Cooperación en Ciencia y Tecnología para el Desarrollo: Ibero-American Cooperation for Scientific and Technological Development Programme) founded by Latin American and Caribbean countries, Portugal, and Spain to enable further cooperation among research terms, has led to important advances in increasing scientific cooperation and development [12,13]. However, only one initiative in virology has been placed in the virology area in all Ibero-America, the Virored-Cyted network (Red Temática en Virosis Emergentes: Thematic Network on Emerging Viruses), which was created in 2010 and, unfortunately, has been inactive since 2013 [14].…”

Producción científica y redes de colaboración en cáncer en el Perú 2000-2011: un estudio bibliométrico en Scopus y Science Citation Index

“…Nuestro objetivo es describir la producción científica peruana en cáncer en revistas de alto impacto y evaluar las redes de colaboración. Se seleccionó la base de datos SCOPUS porque incluye todas las revistas MEDLINE, tiene mejor cobertura de revistas latinoamericanas (7) y registra la filiación institucional de todos los autores. Se complementó la búsqueda en ISI porque es más selectiva y es empleada en los rankings mundiales de producción científica (8) .…”

What factors affect the visibility of Argentinean publications in humanities and social sciences in Scopus? Some evidence beyond the geographic realm of research

“…In this context, a key prerequisite for the design of regional collaboration policies is the determination of how Latin American partners attain higher research potential (more and better results). This points to the benefits of collaboration in research involving a specific country or institution (Lancho, Guerrero, Chinchilla, & Moya, 2012;Chinchilla, Benavent, Miguel, & Moya, 2012a;Guerrero, Olmeda, & Moya, 2013).…”