Thomson Reuters has announced the results of a study documenting Brazil's steady rise during the last two decades in both the volume and impact of its scientific work. According to Science Watch, Thomson Reuters' subscription newsletter, these findings underscore Brazil's standing among the emergent 'BRIC' nations. BRIC - an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India and China - are the countries possessing the resources and economic potential to capture a significant share of the world's future economic growth.
To assess Brazil's research, Science Watch turned to publication and citation statistics compiled in the Thomson Reuters National Science Indicators database. It was observed that the number of published research papers with at least one Brazil-based author increased from just over 3,000 in 1989 to more than 19,000 in 2007.
To examine output across various scientific fields, Science Watch compared Brazil's share of Thomson Reuters-indexed papers during two time periods, 1994-1998 and 2004-2008. Agricultural Sciences led the pack with an increase of 3.2 percentage points between the 1994-1998 period and the 2004-2008 period. Plant & animal sciences ranked second with a 3 percent increase and pharmacology & toxicology rounded out the top three with a 1.78 percent increase.
Science Watch also assessed the overall impact of Brazil's science by charting its combined citations-per-paper in all fields compared to the world average.
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