Ecuador publications in the Science Citation Index Expanded: institutions, subjects, citation and collaboration patterns

Abstract

Introduction: Ecuador, a country of 17 million inhabitants with a medium human development index of 0.75, has a small scientific productivity in relation to its size and population. Objective: To analyze Ecuador publications in the Science Citation Index Expanded, focusing on productivity, subjects, institutions, citations, and trends. Methods: We analyzed scientific publications by authors from Ecuador from 1900 to 2017 in the Science Citation Index Expanded and compared it with other tropical countries. Results: We found 16 document types (7 806 articles). The three most productive institutions were Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, and Escuela Politécnica Nacional. USA and Spain were the most frequent collaborating countries. Most articles were in English and ecology, botany, and zoology were common, but no field produced over 8 % of articles. However, ecology represents 11.3 % of the total citations. The most cited papers in the database were from large international biology and physics projects with minimal participation of Ecuadorean scientists. Article citations occurs mostly after the SCI stops counting. Conclusion: Science in Ecuador is growing but needs to greatly increase collaboration among Ecuadorean institutions to reduce its dependence on foreing projects. However, this study did not include articles published by the hundreds of Ecuadorean journals not covered by the SCI Expanded.

Bibliometrics of Vietnam Publications in the Science Citation Index: general trends and comparison with other tropical countries

“…Collaborative articles with Italy, the UK, and Netherlands had higher citations. These patterns can be also found in other tropical countries (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017a;2017b;2017c;Tchuifon Tchuifon et al, 2017;Ho et al, 2018;Boamah & Ho, 2018;Bah et al, 2019;Calahorrano et al, 2020).…”

“…The increase in the number of publications, in all fields of science, is a general trend of tropical countries in the last decade, the same trend has been found in Asia (Ho et al, 2018), Africa (Boamah & Ho, 2018;Bah et al, 2019), and Latin America Calahorrano et al, 2020).…”

“…Vietnam publications were dominated by materials science, which is different from other tropical countries, for example, ecology in Brunei (Ho et al, 2018), Ecuador (Calahorrano et al, 2020), and Panama (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2015); public, environmental and occupational health in Cameroon (Tchuifon et al, 2017), El Salvador, Gambia (Bah, Fu, & Ho, 2019), Ghana (Boamah & Ho, 2018), Guatemala (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2018), Honduras (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017b), and Nicaragua (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017a).…”

“…Vietnam published more articles than other tropical countries. However, its independent articles had lower citation rates (CPP 2018 5.6) than tropical countries in Latin America such as Guatemala with a CPP 2018 of 13 , Ecuador (8.5) (Calahorrano et al, 2020), Honduras (7.5) (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017b), Nicaragua (6.4) (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017a), El Salvador (5.9) (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017c), and Ghana (6.4) in Africa (Boamah & Ho, 2018) and Brunei (7.9) in Asia (Ho et al, 2018).…”

“…In the last decade, publication performances in tropical countries has received much attention. A series studies were presented for Latin America including Costa Rica (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2012), Panama (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2015), Nicaragua (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017a), Honduras (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017b), El Salvador (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017c), Guatemala , and Ecuador (Calahorrano, Monge-Nájera, Wang, & Ho, 2020). Similar investigations were also done in Africa, including Gambia (Bah, Fu, & Ho, 2019), Cameroon (Tchuifon Tchuifon, Fu, & Ho, 2017) and Ghana (Boamah & Ho, 2018).…”