Abstract
This paper analyzes the patterns of health biotechnology publications in six Latin American countries from 2001 to 2015. The countries studied were Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba and Mexico. Before our study, there were no data available on HBT development in half of the Latin-American countries we studied, i.e., Argentina, Colombia and Chile. To include these countries in a scientometric analysis of HBT provides fuller coverage of HBT development in Latin America. The scientometric study used the Web of Science database to identify health biotechnology publications. The total amount of health biotechnology production in the world during the period studied was about 400,000 papers. A total of 1.2% of these papers, were authored by the six Latin American countries in this study. The results show a significant growth in health biotechnology publications in Latin America despite some of the countries having social and political instability, fluctuations in their gross domestic expenditure in research and development or a trade embargo that limits opportunities for scientific development. The growth in the field of some of the Latin American countries studied was larger than the growth of most industrialized nations. Still, the visibility of the Latin American research (measured in the number of citations) did not reach the world average, with the exception of Colombia. The main producers of health biotechnology papers in Latin America were universities, except in Cuba were governmental institutions were the most frequent producers. The countries studied were active in international research collaboration with Colombia being the most active (64% of papers co-authored internationally), whereas Brazil was the least active (35% of papers). Still, the domestic collaboration was even more prevalent, with Chile being the most active in such collaboration (85% of papers co-authored domestically) and Argentina the least active (49% of papers). We conclude that the Latin American countries studied are increasing their health biotechnology publishing. This strategy could contribute to the development of innovations that may solve local health problems in the region.
Highlights
Biotechnology has been lauded to be a panacea that has the potential to contribute to solving problems in diverse fields
We examined the levels of publication in Health biotechnology (HBT) in the Latin American countries studied
Based on the research reported in this paper we conclude that: Firstly, the Latin American countries studied increased their HBT production in the 2001–2015 period
Summary
Biotechnology has been lauded to be a panacea that has the potential to contribute to solving problems in diverse fields. Other historical examples include the European Union (known as the European Community at the time) that allocated more than US$ 300 million to biotechnology-related programs in the early 1980s [14]. These programs constituted the first step to create the biotechnology industry in Europe. In 2015, the financing of the global biotechnology industry had reached US$ 180 billion and had almost doubled compared to the 2014 financing of US$ 102.57 billion [17]. This reflects the high expectations and financial attractiveness perceived of biotechnology in the business world and by governments worldwide
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