Research landscape of the BRICS countries: current trends in research output, thematic structures of publications, and the relative influence of partners

Mapping of the scientific production of industry 4.0 in the BRICS: reflections and interfaces

“…In Graph 6, the BRICS country that stands out in article publications is China, followed by Brazil, which is ahead of South Africa (with the same amount as the US) and Russia (which is similar in numbers to Germany). Although articles from India were not found in general, the results converge with other studies that demonstrate the increasing visibility of the bloc's countries in terms of scientific publications, especially China, although the publications with cooperation inter-BRICS are less frequent (FINARDI and BURATTI, 2016;SHASHNOV and KOTSEMIR, 2018). It is important to note that the countries shown on Graph 6 are the union of some technologically advanced countries with others that were used as keywords in the research.…”

The Scientific Impact Derived From the Disciplinary Profiles

“…This amendment improved rankings in the right direction, unfortunately not radically enough (Allik et al, 2020b ). As we said above, the disciplinary profiles appeared to be different for scientifically developed and non-leading countries (Kozlowski et al, 1999 ; Almeida et al, 2009 ; Yang et al, 2012 ; Bongioanni et al, 2014 , 2015 ; Harzing and Giroud, 2014 ; Carley et al, 2017 ; Li, 2017 ; Daraio et al, 2018 ; Shashnov and Kotsemir, 2018 ). For example, it was noticed that one of the reasons why post-communist countries are still lagging behind Western counterparts is their archaic disciplinary structure reflecting, among other things, the demands of the former totalitarian regimes (Kozlowski et al, 1999 ; Markusova et al, 2009 ; Jurajda et al, 2017 ).…”

“…that have a distinctly different level of scientific impact. It was also observed that BRICS countries differ from the scientifically leading countries typically belonging to G7 not only by the overall scientific impact but also by differences in the disciplinary structure of their sciences (Bornmann et al, 2015 ; Li, 2017 ; Shashnov and Kotsemir, 2018 ; Yue et al, 2018 ). For example, it was observed that a competitive advantage of a group of nations including the Netherlands, USA, UK, Canada, and Israel is an emphasis on social and biomedical research (Harzing and Giroud, 2014 ).…”

“…It was noticed that characteristics of the disciplinary structure may also be a factor that affects the competitive advantages of national sciences (Yang et al, 2012 ; Bongioanni et al, 2014 , 2015 ; Cimini et al, 2014 ; Harzing and Giroud, 2014 ; Radosevic and Yoruk, 2014 ; Albarran et al, 2015 ; Lorca and de Andrés, 2019 ; Pinto and Teixeira, 2020 ). For example, it has been argued that this archaic disciplinary structure is one of the reasons why Russia and other former communist countries are still lagging behind Western nations (Kozlowski et al, 1999 ; Markusova et al, 2009 ; Adams and King, 2010 ; Guskov et al, 2016 ; Jurajda et al, 2017 ; Tregubova et al, 2017 ; Shashnov and Kotsemir, 2018 ). In a comprehensive study of how disciplinary structure is related to the competitive advantage in science of different nations, Harzing and Giroud ( 2014 ) showed that countries that demonstrated the fastest increase in their scientific productivity during the periods 1994–2004 and 2002–2012 remained relatively stable in their fairly well-balanced disciplinary structures.…”

“…Pinto and Teixeira ( 2020 ) examined disciplinary profiles of 65 countries over a broad period of time (1980–2016). There were several studies analyzing 16 G7 and BRICS countries (Yang et al, 2012 ; Shashnov and Kotsemir, 2018 ; Yue et al, 2018 ). Li ( 2017 ) explored disciplinary profiles of 45 countries, which is still a relatively small fraction of nations capable for a substantial scientific contribution.…”