37 years of scientific activity in a Biochemistry Department in Brazil: patterns of growth and factors leading to increased productivity

Urubatã E Gomes,Luciana C Berti,Diogo L De Oliveira,Diogo O Souza,Susana T Wofchuk,Olavo Amaral

doi:10.1590/s0001-37652011005000011

Abstract

Scientific activity in Brazil has experienced an accelerated growth in the past decades, with an increase in productivity that greatly surpasses the international average. This growth has occurred mostly at the expense of centers of excellence in public universities, which account for the vast majority of the country's scientific output. The aim of this study was to evaluate the production of the Department of Biochemistry of a large public university in southern Brazil (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul), as well as to identify internal and external policies that have influenced this growing production profile. We have performed a historical analysis of the scientific output of this Department of Biochemistry, which accounts for a considerable share of the indexed scientific production at this university. By focusing on the temporal course of its growth and drawing correlations between scientific output and important events in the history of the Department of Biochemistry and of the Brazilian science policies, we concluded that internal factors (as the creation of a postgraduation program, collaboration among researchers, experienced abroad researchers, qualification of faculty members) and external factors (as investments in the postgraduate education, the establishment of national scientific policies, such as financial stimuli for productive researchers and evaluation systems) influence scientific productivity in Brazil.

Highlights

The scientific production has been steadily growing in the world over the past decades, both in the developed and in the developing world
From 1971 to 2007, the total scientific output of the Department of Biochemistry in periodicals amounted to 1534 articles, of which 1247 were indexed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)
Non-indexed scientific production remained in a low level throughout the period

Summary

Introduction

The scientific production has been steadily growing in the world over the past decades, both in the developed and in the developing world. Two largest countries and main scientific “powerhouses” of the region, Brazil and Mexico, are in the forefront of Latin American scientific growth. Both have experienced a rapid growth in their number of publications from the 1970s onward, and have attracted attention to the study of factors influencing this growth (Velloso et al 2004). The almost parallel increase in the number of postgraduate students is among the reasons cited for the growth of science in the case of Brazil are (Leta et al 1998, De Meis et al 2003a, De Meis 2003b), as well as the work of regulatory and fomenting agencies in monitoring, stimulating and rewarding scientific productivity within universities, even at times in which investment was low (Leta et al 1998)

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