Comparison of the scientific efficiency between Colombia and Mexico through relative indicators of production and scientific quality

Abstract

We analyzed the dynamics of Colombian and Mexican scientific production, and quality in Social Sciences (SS), using relative indicators. For the period of time between 2006 and 2017, we estimated the scientific production, investment in R&D and the number of graduate doctors, as well as the percentages of the scientific quality of Q1 journals with national authorship and their citations in prestigious journals visible in Scopus. We found that the R&D investment, scientific production, and the number of graduate doctors in Mexico is higher than Colombia. However, Colombia surpassed Mexico in research productivity. Neither Colombia nor Mexico reported journals in Q1 for SS, reflecting the low levels of citation indicators. We show that the use of relative indicators complements the conventional bibliometric analysis.