International Brazilian scientific production: A scientometric study by normalized indicators (1996-2011)

Abstract

In this research, we aim at comparatively analyzing the normalized scientometric indicators of production and citation of the Brazilian research, in the 27 areas of knowledge, from the data presented in the Scimago Journal & Country Rank gate, in the period between 1996 and 2011. Besides, we aim at assessing the correlation among these indicators in order to verify if the insertion and the impact are associated within the Brazilian performance. Eventually, we aim at grouping the areas by means of the similarities of the indicators analyzed. As our procedure, we calculated the percentage of Brazilian journals, from the Journal Rankings option, and the normalized Brazilian index for the indicators under analysis, from the Country Rankings option. Next, we calculated the Pearson correlations among the indicators and we achieved the cluster analysis, in order to group the 27 areas, according to their similarities in the indicators. As results, Brazil ranks above average among the producing countries, in all the normalized indexes. Except from the citation average, all the other indicators present positive correlations. 4 clusters were constituted for the Brazilian performance. The results show that the grouped and articulated analysis of normalized indexes enables a more consistent view of the Brazilian science.