International Collaboration in Latin American Psychology Through the Analysis of Co-authorship Networks

Abstract

More than half of a century has passed since a paradigmatic change in the scientific endeavour took place: from science that advanced through the discursive interchange of geographically dispersed research findings and reflections, to highly interconnected and collaborative efforts that transcend borders (Wagner & Leydesdorff, 2005, Research Policy, 34:1608–1618). These new “invisible colleges” have been recognized since the end of the twentieth century as the network structures that emerge from co-authorships in scientific publications. These network structures that also inspire further production of knowledge, diffusion of concepts, methodologies and theories, circulation of scientific metaphors, and, above all, knowledge transfer, transformation, and appropriation. The expected impact of scientific collaboration on the consolidation of national capabilities for producing and absorbing scientific knowledge has resulted in the implementation of diverse instruments that aim at encouraging collaboration, particularly among peers from different countries. Psychology has also seen this increased international collaboration, and to evaluate its impact, we used bibliometric techniques on Latin American articles published between 2016 and 2020 in journals indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) under the subject categories related to psychology, to explore the characteristics and conditions of scientific collaboration in this corpus.