Countries emerging as major scientific powers

Abstract

The last issue emphasized the changes taking place in the Revista Brasileira de Hematologia e Hemoterapia (RBHH) and discussed the reasons that the Associacao Brasileira de Hematologia e Hemoterapia (ABHH) and her two sister societies decided to internationalize the journal.(1-3) It was pointed out that one of the primary reasons for this was the new Qualis classification by the Brazilian further education council (Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior - Capes). In several articles, editors of many Brazilian journals voiced their unanimous disagreement at the use of just the Thomson-Reuters impact factor in the preparation of this new classification.(4,5) The impact factor has long been used inappropriately to assess the productivity of individual researchers and professors and consequently in academic decisions related to promotion. Thus, several reports exorcise the Thomson-Reuters impact factor and recommend that other indices, such as those of SCImago and SciELO, should also be used in the classification of scientific journals.(6,7) This is justified and so the objective of the Brazilian editors was to valorize national production and Brazilian journals. In June, Crossref Quarterly, the e-letter of one of the institutions that attribute Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to scientific publications on the internet, reported on the Brazilian evolution over the last two years in respect to the number of requests for DOIs.(8) Crossref cites Brazil because of the recent increase in membership; the RBHH is one of these new members. Another article from the Royal Society entitled Knowledge, Networks and Nations: Global scientific collaboration in the 21st century identifies the new emerging countries of great scientific power led by China and including Brazil and also throws light on the growing scientific production of countries that are not normally mentioned such as Iran, Turkey and Tunisia.(9) China is now the second highest producer of scholarship articles worldwide and the fourth in medicine.(10) Eleven years ago it was the nineteenth in the ranking of SCImago in medicine, that is, behind Brazil which was the seventeenth (Table 1). China's contribution has accompanied its intense economic progress that has been observed over the last fifteen years. Table 1 Scientific publications in medicine - 1996 to 2010(10) Albeit not so evident, a similar evolution has happened number giving a larger slice of the share in these years (Figure 1). Today, both in general publications and in medicine, we are in the thirteenth position according to the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR - Table 1). Figure 1 Evolution of scientific production in Brazil between 1996 and 2010(10) And how is the production of Hematology? Table 2 is the cumulated publications from 1996 to 2010. In 2009 and 2010 there was intense and comparable production in Italy, the UK and Germany; these countries produced the highest number of articles after the USA. Between 1999 and 2009 China climbed from the twenty-fifth place to the seventh place giving it an aggregate position of thirteenth in 2010 (Table 2). Table 2 Scientific publications in hematology – 1996 to 2010(10) In the same period, Brazil moved from twenty-fourth to fourteenth position and its aggregate position for 1996 to 2010 is eighteenth. This is important but it is even more significant if we look at the production of Brazil in 2010 when it is in the twelfth position and not so far behind countries such as Australia and Spain (Table 3). Table 3 Scientific publications in hematology – 2010(10) However we can improve as is clear on comparing the percentage of production in hematology in respect to the overall production of documents in Medicine. Table 4 is a simple comparison of evolution of randomly chosen years of the countries that lead aggregate ranking in Hematology as well as China and Brazil. What is observed is that every year the percentage contribution of the USA and Italy in the field of hematology compared to its overall scientific production in medicine is higher than China and Brazil which shows we can and should improve. Table 4 Percentage of publications in hematology compared to the overall scientific publications in medicine of each country in 1999, 2004, 2009, cumulative of 2006 and 2009 and the year of highest productivity(10) At this point we should emphasize that the RBHH has an important role in the evolution of hematology in Brazil; it is publishing most of the citable and cited documents which make up the score of the ranking of the SJR. These data can be challenged or considered irrelevant, but should be viewed as a stimulus; an encouragement to continue with changes to transform the Revista Brasileira de Hematologia e Hemoterapia.