Scientific communication in Brazil (1998-2012): Indexing, growth, flow and dispersion

Abstract

The Brazilian scientific production growth in the international scenario may be due to the internationalization of Brazilian science and journals. Within this context, this study collected Brazilian scientific production from the Web of Science and Scientific Electronic Library Online databases - data from 1998 to 2012 - in order to analyze how internationalization influenced the performance of the country. Based on the Bradford Zones and considering the different fields, the aim of this study is to assess the growth in the number of journals in each zone, as well as the proportion of the papers published in national journals throughout five triennia. It was possible to observe that the number of journals exclusively indexed in Scientific Electronic Library Online increased in the period, except in the fourth triennium when several journals were also indexed in the Web of Science. However, about 60% of the national production is published in international journals (Web of Science). The most generalized growth in the number of journals from different fields occurred initially in zone 3 (triennium 2004-2006), then in zone 2 (triennium 2007-2009), and finally in zone 1 (triennium 2010-2012). On the other hand, the percentage of production in national journals across the fields presented three different behaviors: in Social and Human Sciences zones 1 and 2 contains exclusively national journals, and zone 3 is receiving international journals; in Physics, Space Science and Immunology production is exclusively international;