Profiles of Malaria Research in Portugal

Abstract

Synergies between globalization and knowledge economy were suggested to direct biomedical research towards economically-interested activities. In this context, research in malaria, a disease endemic to poverty, may be at a paradoxical stance. This study addresses this issue assessing whether malaria research is driven by the accumulation of economic and/or other forms of capital. Drawing upon academic and epistemic capitalism, malaria research is characterized through the analysis of all Web of science-indexed publications involving Portuguese organizations (1900-2014; n=467). First, data was systematized by content and bibliometric analyses. Subsequently, multiple correspondence analysis revealed a bi-dimensional landscape (who’s publishing; what’s published) and cluster analysis identified three profiles (beginners; local appropriations; global science). This study reveals the construction of Portugal’s scientific system and unveils the assimilation of dominant modes of organizing, doing and thinking despite malaria’s research low profit potential. Extending this approach to other biomedical fields can unravel the dimensions underlying science’s (re)construction.

75 years’ journey of malaria publications: what and where?

“…Although a few bibliometric studies have been performed on research related to malaria, ours is a first analysis of this kind as its targets global malaria bibliometric research through three different databases. Previously published bibliometric malaria-related research was either restricted to a particular geography (Latin America -Munoz-Urbano et al, 2014; China – Fu et al, 2015, Du et al, 2021; India – Singh and Mahanty, 2019, Gupta and Bala, 2011; Malawi – Mwendera et al, 2017; Portugal – Ferreira and Teixeira, 2019; Central African Republic - Nzoumbou-Boko et al, 2022), a particular period or a specific context related to malaria (artemisinin – Dong et al, 2022, Xu et al, 2018; Yao et al, 2012; malaria vaccines – Garg et al, 2009; malaria in pregnancy - van Eijk et al, 2012; malaria vector resistance – Sweileh et al, 2016; anti-malarial drug resistance - Sweileh et al, 2017; citations - Ghamgosar, Zarghani, and Nemati-Anaraki, 2021, Kolle, Vijayashree, and Shankarappa, 2017) or to a wider term such as mosquito-borne disease (Ong, Pauzi, and Gan, 2022) or parasitology (Ellis et al, 2020) or even COVID-19 (Mala et al, 2022). We could find only one article that analyzed global research on malaria (Garrido-Cardenas et al, 2019) but this article was focused on P. vivax and only from the Scopus database.…”