Transformations in the Ecuadorian Scientific Landscape: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Main Publications Trends and the Role of the Scientific Networks and the Public International Scholarship Program

Analysis of Ecuador's SCOPUS scientific production during the 2001–2020 period by means of standardized citation indicators

“…This relative placement within the South American context is proposed as a point of reference for future analysis on the development of science and technology of this country. Finally, from our results using the composite indicator as a measure of scientific production in Ecuador for the indicated decades of studies and in line with Chávez and Gaybor [ 9 ], the critical mass of researchers coming from the Prometheus program and those resulting from the SENESCYT scholarship program implemented by the national government, contributed substantially to the increase in scientific production. With both initiatives of scientific production and public policies aimed at basic or applied research, cooperation between groups of researchers both locally and internationally was also favored.…”

“…There is no doubt that policies or strategies promoted by the state, such as the distribution in all public universities of highly qualified researchers, with proven experience in research and high collaboration contacts, and the SENESCYT scholarship program [ 9 ] were decisive steps for the increase in the number and rate of publications [ 8 ]. Indeed, our emphasis on highlighting the difference in scientific production in the indicated decades had the fundamental objective of emphasizing that, in decade B, the country was opening to a scientific culture not only in terms of production, but also in terms of internationalization and scientific collaboration as also stated by Chávez and Gaybor [ 9 ]. The way research management was conducted during the decade-B was close to proposals like those of developed countries, regarding the speed of administrative processes, the flow of researchers, the organization of high-level scientific events, and the increase of new and better graduate programs nationwide [ 20 ].…”

“…At present, we are considering a more appropriate way to calculate the % of permanency by considering, for instance, the frequencies of reported affiliation per publication over the entire decade to exclude those cases characterized by the lowest frequencies. Finally, it is important to point out that our study shows that the increase in the number of publications was closely related to the increase in the number of Ecuador-based scientists due to the implemented public policies and initiatives [ 8 , 9 ]. However, it must be considered that, during decade-B, Ecuadorian universities received a very high contingent of researchers, most of whom had stable and prolific research groups in their countries of origin.…”

“…[ 11 ]) were analyzed by means of various bibliometric tools. Here, a further analysis of the scientific outcome of Ecuador is proposed as a complement to previous studies [ 9 , 10 , 11 ]. In this context, the present work has two main objectives: (i) to compute the composite indicator of Ecuador-based authors that have published scientific manuscripts in journals indexed in the SCOPUS database and (ii) to obtain a diagnosis of the scientific production of Ecuadorian researchers as contrasted to their South American counterparts by means of the analysis of this standardized citation indicator.…”

“…Another important example was the implementation of a public scholarship program designed to financially support the superior studies of Ecuadorians in recognized universities and research institutes around the world. As reported by Chávez and Gaybor in a recent study on the role of scientific networking in the publication trends of Ecuador [ 9 ], about ∼8000 Ecuadorians have directly benefited from the public scholarship program by 2019. Of this total, it is estimated that approximately ∼88% of the scholarships were used by the beneficiaries to pursuit either a master or a PhD title.…”