Over the last two decades, Brazil has been moving consistently
upward in the output and impact of its scientific publications.
This rise is in keeping with the country’s status as one of
the so-called BRIC nations (Brazil, of course, being the "B" in the
acronym, along with Russia, India, and China), a group whose
resources and economic potential, in the eyes of many observers,
will likely give the quartet a significant share of the
world’s economic growth in the decades to come.
Science Watch has recently examined science in two of
the BRIC nations:
India
(19[5]: 1-2, September/October 2008) and
China
(19[4]: 1-2, July/August 2008). Herewith, attention turns to
Brazil.
For this assessment, Science Watch
turned to the publication and citation statistics compiled
in the Clarivate
National Science Indicators. The
graph above tracks Brazil’s output of
Thomson
Reuters-indexed papers, along with its percent share
world science as reflected in the database, for each year
between 1989 and 2007.
As the graph to the right indicates, the rise in both of these
indices has been steady, as the number of papers with at least
one Brazil-based author address has increased six-fold during
the period—from 3,176 papers in 1989 to more than 19,000
in 2007. Similarly, Brazil’s percent share of world
literature has grown from 0.56% in 1989 to 2.02% in 2007.
To further break down Brazil’s scientific progress in
recent years, Science Watch examined 21 main fields as
covered in National Science Indicators, comparing
Brazil’s world share in two separate five-year periods:
1994 to 1998, and 2004 to 2008. The fields are listed in the
table below, ranked in descending order
from Brazil’s highest percent share to the lowest during
the latest five-year span. A third column at right gives the
increase in percentage between the two periods.
As the table shows, Brazil’s highest representation in
the database is currently in agricultural sciences, with more
than 5% of Clarivate-indexed papers during the
period—and with the increase between the 1994-98 and
2004-08 periods also representing the nation’s highest
rise of any field in the table. Second in the table, both in
terms of Brazil’s latest five-year share and in the
increase since the earlier period, is plant & animal
sciences.
To gauge the overall impact of Brazil’s science, and to
compare it to the other BRIC nations, the graph below charts a
relative-impact score (that is, the nation’s combined
cites-per-paper mark representing all fields, compared against
the world average) over a series of five-year overlapping
periods between 1985 and 2008.
Since 1985, as can be seen in the top line of
the graph, Brazil has logged the highest overall impact,
compared to the world, of any of the BRIC nations (although
none, including Brazil, has yet risen to match or exceed the
overall world impact average). And, aside from a slight dip
in the late 1980s, Brazil’s impact has trended upward:
from 44% of the world average in the 1985-89 period to 63%
of the world mark for 2004-08. The graph, however, also
suggests some doubt as to Brazil’s continuing
dominance in impact among the BRIC group, as India and, most
noticeably, China, are both rising sharply in impact, while
Brazil’s trajectory in recent years has been
comparatively flat.
Although the graph does not show individual fields, figures
from National Science Indicators indicate that
engineering is the main specialty area in which Brazil scored
highest in relative impact during the 2004-08 period: just 5%
below the world mark. Mathematics is also a relatively strong
field, with Brazil scoring at 90% of the world average in the
latest five-year window. Similarly, Brazil’s overall
impact mark of 3.71 cites per paper in physics is just 11% off
the world figure of 4.71 cites per paper.
Progress in other fields can be assessed by comparing
Brazil’s relative impact in the latest five-year period
against the earliest such span covered in National Science
Indicators: 1981-85. By this measure, despite still
lagging the world in impact, Brazil has come farthest in
microbiology, starting with an impact average at only 24% of
the world mark for 1981-85 and rising to within 57% (3.98 cites
per paper for Brazil versus 7.03 cites for the world) during
2004-08. The nation has gained similarly in
psychiatry/psychology (from 27% of the world score for 1981-85
to 60% in the latest five-year period) and space science (54%
of the mark initially, increasing to 78% of the 2004-08 impact
figure.)
In the last ten years, Brazil’s most-cited paper (that
is, exclusively featuring Brazil-based authors, as opposed to
an international collaboration) is in the field of chemistry,
as Science Watch determined by consulting the Thomson
Reuters Essential Science Indicators.
"Ionic liquid (molten salt) phase
organometallic catalysis," (Chemical Reviews,
102[10]: 3667-91, 2002), byJairton Dupont
[
see also,
see also], Roberto F. de Souza, and
Paulo A.Z. Suarez, has now been cited more than 1,300 times.
All three authors list their affiliation at the Universidade
Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre.
Brazil in World
Science: 1994-98 vs.
2004-08
(Based on percent share of Thomson
Reuters-indexed papers in each of 21 main
fields,
ranked by percentage in the latest
five-year period, 2004-08)