Abstract
The Revista de Biología Tropical / International Journal of Tropical Biology and Conservation, founded in 1953, publishes feature articles about tropical nature and is considered one of the leading journals in Latin America. This article analyzes document type, language, countries, institutions, citations and for the first time article lifespan, from 1976 through 2014. We analyzed 3 978 documents from the Science Citation Index Expanded. Articles comprised 88 % of the total production and had 3.7 citations on average, lower than reviews. Spanish and English articles were nearly equal in numbers and citation for English articles was only slightly higher. Costa Rica, Mexico, and the USA are the countries with more articles, and the leading institutions were Universidad de Costa Rica, Universidad Nacional, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico and Universidad de Oriente (Venezuela). The citation lifespan of articles is long, around 37 years. It is not surprising that Costa Rica, Mexico, and Venezuela lead in productivity and cooperation, because they are mostly covered by tropical ecosystems and share a common culture and a tradition of scientific cooperation. The same applies to the leading institutions, which are among the largest Spanish language universities in the neotropical region. American output can be explained by the regional presence of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Organization for Tropical Studies. Tropical research does not have the rapid change typical of medical research, and for this reason, the impact factor misses most of citations for the Revista, which are made after the two-year window used by the Web of Science. This issue is especially damaging for the Revista because most journals that deal with tropical biology are never checked when citations are counted for by the Science Citation Index.
Highlights
The Revista de Biología Tropical/International Journal of Tropical Biology and Conservation is a scientific journal that has been printed since 1953 and basically publishes feature articles from Latin America, the USA, Europe, tropical Africa and Asia
It found that the main topics were animal taxonomy, biomedicine and ecology; that 50 % of articles originated in Costa Rica; that one-half of the papers were in English, and that papers had a mean of 1.79 authors (MongeNájera & Díaz, 1988)
The number of authors per paper was even higher than in previous periods (3.07). This focused on citation in journals covered by the Science Citation Index, reporting that in those journals, Revista articles were cited a mean of one time in the two years following publication, and that the countries that most cite the Revista are USA, Brazil and Mexico
Summary
The Revista de Biología Tropical/International Journal of Tropical Biology and Conservation is a scientific journal that has been printed since 1953 and basically publishes feature articles from Latin America, the USA, Europe, tropical Africa and Asia. The first bibliometric study of the journal was published to celebrate its 35th anniversary and covered main publication topics, rejection rate, origin and language of manuscripts, and number of authors per article (Monge-Nájera & Díaz, 1988). The third study covered the period 20032012 of the Revista and, like the second study, covered collaboration, countries, institutions and impact, but included articles about all topics published during that decade (De Filippo et al, 2016). The number of authors per paper was even higher than in previous periods (3.07) This focused on citation in journals covered by the Science Citation Index, reporting that in those journals, Revista articles were cited a mean of one time in the two years following publication, and that the countries that most cite the Revista are USA, Brazil and Mexico. This article includes that missing decade and analyzes document type, language, countries, institutions, and for the first time, article lifespan
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