Where and How Brazilian Authors Publish
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An Acad Bras Cienc (2020) 92(2): e20200328 DOI 10.1590/0001-3765202020200328 Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências | Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences Printed ISSN 0001-3765 I Online ISSN 1678-2690 www.scielo.br/aabc | www.fb.com/aabcjournal HEALTH SCIENCES Brazilian Publication Profi les: Where Running title: Publishing in and How Brazilian authors publish Brazilian Science Academy Section: Health Sciences CONCEPTA M. MCMANUS, ABILIO A. BAETA NEVES & ANDREA Q. MARANHÃO Abstract: Publishing profi les can help institutions and fi nancing agencies understand the different needs of knowledge areas and regions for development within a country. e20200328 Incites ® (Web of Science) was used to see where Brazilian authors were publishing, the impact, and the cost of this publishing. The USA was the country of choice for 92 publishing journals, along with Brazil, England, and the Netherlands. While Brazilian (2) authors continue to publish in hybrid journals, they are more often opting for closed 92(2) access, with 89% of the papers published in Brazil being open access, compared with 21% of papers published abroad. The correlation between the cost of publishing and the number of citations was positive and signifi cant. Publishing patterns were different depending on the area of knowledge and the Brazilian region. Stagnation or reduction in publications with international collaboration, industry collaboration, or in high impact open access journals may be the cause of a reduction in citation impact. These data can help in elaborating public and institutional policies for fi nancing publications in Brazil, especially when looking at unfavourable changes in currency exchange rates. Key words: impact, OECD area, cost, journal, publisher. INTRODUCTION of research, the possibility of rejection, regional or international importance, tradition, as well as Understanding publication patterns is important, publishing costs (James 2017). Journal selection not only to evaluate investments in scientifi c for publishing research is important in terms projects but also to see where investments of visibility and impact. Many countries have are necessary to meet national objectives signed Open Access (OA) agreements (including and priorities. There are marked differences Brazil) and have started fi nancing researchers to between scientific disciplines and research this end (Suber 2012). fields, including their publishing practices Critical to the interest in the bibliometric and languages (Mathies et al. 2020; McManus dimensions of journals is the growth of & Neves 2020). Many metrics associated with institutional or individual evaluation of research publishing and impact significantly publication-quality (Hall 2011). The development correlate to university reputation (Linton et al. of national research quality evaluations and 2013), but these institutions rarely opinionate metrics with corresponding effects on fi nancial on where research is published, as this is largely resources for universities and individuals left to the individual researcher. Many questions has clear implications for economic, human arise when researchers decide where to publish resource management and research practice, as their research. These include language, quality well as infl uencing where scholars publish and An Acad Bras Cienc (2020) 92(2) CONCEPTA M. MCMANUS, ABILIO A. BAETA NEVES & ANDREA Q. MARANHÃO PUBLISHING IN BRAZILIAN SCIENCE therefore the overall development an academic papers in Q1 journals as well as indicators for field (Visser 2009), leading to the undertaking international and industry collaboration. of bibliometric studies to develop rankings A principal component analysis was carried of academic leadership, influence, journals, out using quality indicators for journal data and research quality. The use of bibliometric (above) as well as cluster analysis. All statistical measurement can shape researchers´ analyses were performed using SAS (Statistical (particularly younger ones) choice of where Analysis System Inc, Cary, North Carolina). to publish and may focus them more towards Costs of publishing were estimated for international (English-language) peer-reviewed the top 50 journals (78,830 papers, 18.5% total journals (Hammarfelt and de Rijcke 2015). production) using information from journal The objective of this study is to see where homepages, Scielo (www.scielo.br) and DOAJ. Brazilian authors publish, how much this costs When page charges were for published article 7 and how this affects the citation of the papers. pages were assumed, while if for word this was 20 pages. In all cases, discounts for members of specific societies were applied. If the journal was MATERIAL AND METHODS a hybrid, the % open access papers for Brazilian Data from this study were obtained from Incites Authors from Incites® was used. Translations (https://incites.clarivate.com/) using the journal were assumed to be 10% of the papers published and articles tabs, from 2010 to 2019. The main in English at (Brazilian Reais) BRL1500 per paper. categories of the Organisation for Economic Co- Where the production of a translation certificate operation and Development (OECD 2007) were was obligatory or recommended these increased used in this study for classification purposes. to 90 and 50%, respectively (Björk & Solomon This scheme uses six broad subject categories 2014, 2015). All values were transformed into for publishing data: (1) natural sciences, (2) dollars at (United States Dollar) USD1 = BRL4.3. engineering and technology, (3) medical and health sciences, (4) agricultural sciences, RESULTS (5) social sciences, and (6) humanities. The discussion here is based on these broad fields. There were a total of 14,317 journals or documents Changes in numbers of publications and registered as having one or more article from quality indicators on a journal basis were a Brazilian author in the period of 2010-2019. evaluated including country of publisher, Of these, around 2100 are responsible for 80% Category Normalised Citation Index (CNCI - of the papers published by Brazilian authors dividing the actual count of citing items by the (Figure 1). expected citation rate for documents with the Approximately 20% of the journals same document type, year of publication and contained 80% of the papers (Table I) except subject area), Journal Normalized Citation Impact for Agricultural Sciences, where this value was (JNCI - instead of normalising per subject area around 10%, showing a higher dispersion among or field, it normalises the citation rate for the journals in this area of knowledge. The total of journal in which the document is publishing), journals is greater than the country total as % papers in top 10%, % Open access (OA), % journals and papers may appear in more than one area of knowledge. An Acad Bras Cienc (2020) 92(2) e20200328 2 | 22 CONCEPTA M. MCMANUS, ABILIO A. BAETA NEVES & ANDREA Q. MARANHÃO PUBLISHING IN BRAZILIAN SCIENCE is a tendency to publish in lower quality journals (maybe due to the lack of these in several knowledge areas), but this is not true when Brazilians publish in the exterior. While Agricultural Sciences follow the same trend, Brazilians in Engineering & Technology, Medical &Health, Natural and Social sciences tend to publish more in higher quality journals. The documents in the humanities tended to be “not defined” as they were mainly books and so not Figure 1. Cumulative proportion of papers per journal by Brazilian authors (Incites ® 2009-1019). subject to journal quartile analyses. Overall, the citation index (CNCI) was higher in Q1 journals Each area of knowledge shows a different (1.69), decreasing to Q4 (0.32). Q1 journals in profile as to country of origin of the journals Brazil had a medium impact of 0.58 and Q4 where Brazilian authors publish and the number (0.22). of papers published in these journals (Figure Numbers of publications in Brazilian 2 and Supplementary Material, Figure S1) as journals has been falling in the areas of Medical well as the number of journals and papers & Health, Natural and Agricultural Sciences per quartile in each area of knowledge (Figure since 2011, while increased in the Engineering 3 and Figure S2). In almost all areas, there is a & Technological sciences. The decrease in tendency to publish more papers in Brazilian the number of papers published in Brazil may journals than in journals from other countries, reflect an increase in publications in journals but only in Agricultural Sciences and Humanities not registered in the Web of Science. In contrast, are the highest proportion of papers published there was an increase in Brazilian publications in Brazilian journals. Overall, Brazilian journals abroad in all areas until more recently when publish the second-highest number of papers this has stabilised or has started to fall (Figure (24%), after the USA (27%). 4). As seen in Figure 2, the major publishing When looking at the quartiles of where countries, along with Brazil, are the USA, Brazilian papers are published, the differences England and the Netherlands (>75% in all cases). between areas again become apparent. When While papers in the Medical & Health area have the papers are published in Brazil, there recently decreased in these countries (Figure Table I. Summary of publication distribution by Brazilian authors (Incites ® 2009-2019). Number of Journals % of Journals Number of Journals Number of papers with 80% with 80% Agriculture 988 102 66342 10.33 Eng & Tech 3013 515 83834 17.09