Abstract

Despite of its small size, the Central American country of Costa Rica is internationally recognized as one of the world leaders in conservation and as the Central American leader in science. There have been no recent studies on the country's scientific production. The objective of this study was to analyze the Costa Rican scientific output as represented in the Science Citation Index Expanded. All documents with "Costa Rica" in the address field from 1981 to 2010 were included (total 6 801 publications). Articles (79%) were more frequent than other types of publication and were mostly in English (83%). Revista de Biología Tropical published the most articles (17%), followed by Toxicon and Turrialba (2.5%). The New England Journal of Medicine had the highest impact factor (53.484) with nine articles. Of 5 343 articles with known institutional address, 63%were internationally collaborative articles (most with the USA) with h index 91 and citation per publication 18. A total of 81% of all articles were inter-institutionally collaborative articles, led by the Universidad de Costa Rica. This reflects research and education agreements among these countries. Universidad de Costa Rica ranked top one in inter-institutionally collaborative articles, the rank of the total inter-institutionally collaborative articles, and the rank of first author articles and corresponding author articles. Studied subjects and journals in our sample are in agreement with dominant science fields and journals in Costa Rica. Articles with the highest citation were published in New England Journal of Medicine. The largest citation of medical articles reflects the general interest and wider readership of this subject. All corresponding and first authors of the high impact articles were not from Costa Rica. In conclusion, the scientific output of Costa Rican authors is strong in the areas related to conservation but the impact is higher for biomedical articles, and Costa Rican authors need to improve their position within research teams.

Highlights

  • Despite of its small size, the Central American country of Costa Rica is internationally recognized as one of the world leaders in conservation and as the Central American leader in science (Weidner & Jänicke 2002, Monge-Nájera & Nielsen 2005)

  • The earliest bibliometric analysis of Costa Rican scientific output was the study done by Monge-Nájera & Díaz (1988), which was limited to one specific journal, the Revista de Biología Tropical

  • It found that zoological articles were more common than botanical articles and that most Costa Rican authors published in Spanish, in contrast with many of their Latin American colleagues

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Despite of its small size, the Central American country of Costa Rica is internationally recognized as one of the world leaders in conservation and as the Central American leader in science (Weidner & Jänicke 2002, Monge-Nájera & Nielsen 2005). The earliest bibliometric analysis of Costa Rican scientific output was the study done by Monge-Nájera & Díaz (1988), which was limited to one specific journal, the Revista de Biología Tropical. It found that zoological articles were more common than botanical articles and that most Costa Rican authors published in Spanish, in contrast with many of their Latin American colleagues. An analysis based on a more representative index, Biological Abstracts, found that while the most productive Latin American countries in total number of articles were Brazil, Mexico and Argentina (large countries with a long tradition of funding scientific research), Costa Rica was very productive when a per capita correction was made (Monge-Nájera & Nielsen 2005)

Objectives
Methods
Results
Conclusion
Full Text
Paper version not known

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.