EDITORIAL
The impact of our publications
The amount of scientific production in Latin America has greatly increased between 1988 and 2001. The analysis of this increase has been the subject of various debates which demonstrate the scientific and technological qualification of a strong group of Latin-American countries having Brazil as their leader.
The methodology applied to evaluate these results assessed the quantity of intellectual production, the relationship among countries, the level of international collaboration and the impact of our publications, which is measured by how often our articles are cited.
The results show that this production increase was concentrated in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. These countries, together, represented almost the entire scientific production of Latin America in 2001.
In the period analyzed, Brazil presented rapid production increase, with a fourfold growth in its scientific production, from 12% to 44% of all manuscripts published by Latin-American authors. Mexico ranked second, with a threefold growth in its scientific production.
The importance of international author collaboration is indisputable. It represents information exchange and widespread dissemination of knowledge. International collaboration has increased from 50% to 71% in all Latin-American articles. In all, the number of countries which started producing together with Latin America went from 43 to 103.
Another very important topic is the impact of our publications. The number of Latin-American articles cited has also increased threefold between 1988 and 2001.
Even though these results are favorable, the impact of our publications has yet to become stronger. The importance of a publication lies in its contribution to the community, in its impact and in how it motivates the generation of new ideas.
Therefore, it is essential that articles published in our journals be cited, thus improving dental research in our country and contributing to ever increasing levels of scientific and cultural development.
José Luiz Lage-Marques
Assistant Editor
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
08 Apr 2005 -
Date of issue
Dec 2004
