Trends in general and public health scientific output of authors affiliated to Brazilian institutions among high-impact and SciELO journals: 1995-2019

Abstract

This study aimed to assess the percentage of articles with authors affiliated to Brazilian institutions in high-impact journals and SciELO journals and to evaluate trends in 5-year citations according to the author's affiliation and journal category. Bibliometric data were obtained using Scopus database from 1995 to 2019. Publications were selected from four journal categories: High-impact General Health (HGH), High-impact Public Health (HPH), SciELO General Health (SGH) and SciELO Public Health (SPH). The number of citations that were received five years after publication and the percentage of publications with any author affiliated to Brazil were calculated by each year. The same 146 journals were followed. There was a significant increase in percentage of articles with authors affiliated to Brazilian institutions in all sets of journals. Among HGH, there was an increasing from 0.3% to 1.5% between 1995-2019, for HPH from 1% to 3%, for SGH from 49.7% to 55.4%, and for SPH from 47.4% to 71.9%. There was a significant (p < 0.01) increase in the mean of 5-year citations in all groups and Brazilian affiliated articles increased more than average. For each 10 years, average HGH articles increased 11.9 citations and Brazilian affiliated articles 32.0 citations. The results suggest that the presence of Brazilian science is increasing, and the scientific impact has increased more than average.