SCImago Iber 2024 Insights
Compared to the previous period, the number of institutions simultaneously present in the SIR World and in the SCImago Iber increases by 97 organizations from all sectors. At the same time, the number of institutions listed exclusively in the Ibero-American ranking decreases by 133 organizations. This decrease is primarily due to the removal of organizations whose research activity is sporadic and who do not publish regularly and, secondly, it is a result of the ongoing process of updating and standardizing information carried out by the SCImago Research Group team, which includes data on institutional mergers, changes in segregation, and renaming of institutions. At the regional level, the Universities sector continues to be the driving force behind the generation of scientific knowledge (See the section "What has happened in Ibero-America compared to the previous period?").
The values correspond to the value of each indicator in the five-year period 2019-2023
The arrows correspond to the status of each indicator in 2019-2023 compared to the same indicator in the period 2018-2022
At the country level, Spain, Brazil, Portugal and Mexico continue to be the major generators of the scientific knowledge, although only the European countries manage to surpass the world citation average. In Latin America, only countries with a low output capacity (less than 100.000 documents in the five-year period) achieve good results in terms of Normalized Impact, excepting Chile, which, with more than 90.000 publications, manages to exceed the world citation average by more than 8 points (See the section “The output capacity versus the leadership capacity in Ibero-America”) In terms of leadership, although the capacity to lead quality research varies considerably from one country to another, in all cases the output led by Ibero-American researchers performs lower performance than the total output of each of the analyzed countries (See the section: The output capacity versus the leadership capacity in Ibero-America). At the same time, it is observed that the documents published in open access add value to the output of each country, so the behavior of Open Access publications shows a better performance than the total national output in all Ibero-American countries (See the section: "What is the contribution of Open Access to the performance of the national output?") On the other hand, in the countries of the region, less than 10% of the scientific output is cited in public policy documents, around 40% of the Scientific Talent Pool are female contributors and, in all cases, more than 30% of the publications are related to the Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations (See the section “What is the societal impact of research in Ibero-America?)
What has happened in Ibero-America compared to the previous period?
For this edition of the SCImago Iber, the number of institutions has decreased by 0,4% compared to the previous period, reaching a total of 10.413 organizations from the 22 Ibero-American countries. Methodologically, the indicators maintain their nature, reflecting the scientific activity of the region in three different areas: research, innovation and societal impact, with particular emphasis on the last dimension, with the development of three new indicators: the generation of new knowledge related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) defined by the United Nations, the participation of women in research processes (Female STP), and the use of obtained results in the creation or improvement of public policies (Overton). In the five-year period 2019-2023, the Ibero-American countries maintain their contribution to the world output at 9%, with a total of 1.617.197 documents, increasing their publication capacity by more than 46.000 papers compared to the 2018-2022 period. This volume of documents has been published by 10.413 institutions that are mainly concentrated in Health (39,16%) and Universities (19,23%) sectors, followed by the Government (18,35%), Non-profit (12,99%) and Companies (10,27%) sectors. Universities are solidifying their role as the driving force behind knowledge generation, contributing to over 80% of the region's output and, compared to the previous five-year period, the distribution remains the same in terms of both the number of organizations by sector and their capacity to generate scientific output. The number of institutions that carry out continuous research and have the capacity to publish more than 100 documents per year (institutions present in the SIR) has increased compared to the previous period, rising from 1.053 in SIR 2023 to 1.150 in SIR 2024. The Companies and Non-profit sectors continue to be those that host the largest number of institutions with a very limited publishing capacity or that publish sporadically, or as a result of occasional projects.
According to the number of papers published between 2019-2023, the group of major knowledge generators includes once again Spain, Brazil, Portugal and Mexico with more than 100.000 documents published in the five-year period, where Spain remains the country with the highest volume of output, exceeding 590.000 documents. Meanwhile, Mexico is still being the country with the lowest ratio of institutions with the capacity to publish more than 100 papers in the last year analyzed (7,17%), although this proportion decreases in all cases.
In the second group, formed by the countries that have published between 10.000 and 100.000 documents in the five-year period, the novelty is the presence of Uruguay, which manages to exceed 10.000 publications and joins Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Cuba. In this case, Cuba remains the country with the lowest percentage of institutions simultaneously present in SCImago Iber and SIR World (2,18%), although, during this period, Colombia and Uruguay also show a lower ratio of institutions with high output capacity below 10% (7,5% and 5,49% respectively).
The third group includes countries with less than 10.000 publications between 2019-2023: Venezuela, Costa Rica, Panama, Bolivia, Paraguay, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Andorra. This time, Costa Rica is the country with the highest number of documents (8.398) and Andorra remains the country with the lowest output volume in the entire region (208 papers), and in no case the number of institutions that have published more than 100 documents in 2023 is higher than 5.
In Impact and Collaboration indicators, the small countries are those with a higher percentage of documents published in international collaboration and rank above the world citation average, except for Venezuela, Ecuador and Cuba. Among the main knowledge generators in the region, Spain, Portugal, Chile and Uruguay have more than 45% of their output co-authored with researchers from other countries, with a Normalized Impact which is situated at or above the world citation average. On the contrary, the main Latin American countries, with the exception of Chile and Uruguay, have the lowest international collaboration rates in the region with Normalized Impact indicators that are ranging from 1 to 15% below the world average.
On the other hand, Spain has the greatest capabilities in terms of scientific publishing with more than 800 national journals published and a concentration of articles in this type of journals that remains below 20% of national output. In Latin America, Brazil is, by far, the country with the greatest capacity to publish this type of publications with 470 national journals indexed in Scopus, followed by Colombia (159 journals), Chile (135 journals) and Mexico (131 publications). However, Brazil also shows a high concentration of documents in national journals with more than 27% of the national output published in this type of journals, in contrast to Colombia at 20%, Chile at 17%, and Mexico at 13%. Cuba and Venezuela continue to be the countries that host the highest ratio of papers published in national journals (more than 30% of total output), with a very limited publishing capacity, with 31 and 33 publications respectively.
By subject areas, Medicine (29%) and Social Sciences (14,3%) are the areas that contribute the most to the region's output, Engineering (13.27%) moves from the second to the third place, and Agricultural and Biological Sciences (12,97%) is in fourth place. Among the top four areas, only Medicine manages to surpass the world citation average this time, Engineering and Agricultural and Biological Sciences are slightly below the world average while Social Sciences is considerably far from the expected values, with a much lower level of international collaboration compared to the other mentioned areas. The above indicates a growth in the output capacity but not in terms of impact and recognition by the international scientific community. Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology and Neuroscience continue to be the areas with the best performance in terms of impact, with a level of international collaboration around 50%.
The output capacity versus the leadership capacity in Ibero-America
According to the leadership capacity, the performance of the Ibero-American countries is quite irregular. A first group would be constituted by Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Spain and Peru with a leadership percentage greater than 70% of the total published documents. If the performance of the total output is compared with the led output, a decrease in national capacities is observed in all indicators. In expected impact (publications in Q1), the loss remains between 1% and 11%; in Normalized Impact between 18% and 33%, excepting for Argentina, where a greater difference is revealed between the results of the total output and led output. In International Collaboration, the countries of this group have between 12% and 21% fewer co-authored papers with researchers from other countries when only the output led by national researchers is analyzed.
A second group would be composed by countries whose led output is between 50% and 70% in the period 2019-2023 In this group, we find: Portugal, Cuba, Ecuador, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela and Costa Rica. In this case, the led documents lose between 5% and 15% of the expected impact (Q1), more than 20% of the Normalized Impact in Portugal, Cuba and Ecuador and between 30% and 50% in the rest of the countries of the group. In the case of International Collaboration, the loss of capacities of the scientific output led by national researchers ranges between 18% and 30%.
The countries in the third group have a percentage of led output that ranges between 30% and 50% of the total published documents: Paraguay, Panama, Bolivia, Honduras, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. The fourth group is made up of Guatemala, Nicaragua and Andorra with a leadership capacity that represents between 10% and 30% of the national output. In these two groups, the analysis of the performance of the led documents reveals a loss of capacities ranging from 26% to 32% in the expected impact indicator (Q1), over 50% in the Normalized Impact indicator, and over 20% in International Collaboration.
What is the contribution of Open Access to the performance of the national output?
In the case of the Ibero-American countries, the Open Access output represents between 50% and 70% of the total documents published at the national level and, in general, the analysis of this type of output demonstrates a better performance in the expected impact, observed impact and international collaboration indicators. Specifically in terms of publications in high-quality scientific journals (Q1), Brazil is the only country whose capacities decrease if only Open Access output is analyzed, with 38,03% of the documents in Q1 in the total output compared to 35,24% in the same indicator for free access output. In the rest of the countries, the open access output increases the ratio of first quartile papers by up to 10 percentage points.
In Normalized Impact, in all cases, the Open Access output achieves better results than the total national output, with Panama and El Salvador being the countries in which a greater contribution to the country's impact of open output is observed (more than 30%). Among the main producers in the region, the Open Access output achieves a Normalized Impact that exceeds the impact of the total national output in all cases less than 10%.
At the same time, in concerning the International Collaboration indicator, Colombia´s Open Access output loses between 1%-5% and Bolivia and Andorra remains almost the same in the total output and in Open Acces output. In For the rest of the countries in the region, the analysis of the total national output compared to the Open Access output shows that the capacity to collaborate with international co-authors increases between 1% and 5%, except for Ecuador and Uruguay, where the increase is higher than 5%.
What is the societal impact of research in Ibero-America?
In the SCImago Iber 2024 edition, 3 new indicators have been released that reflect the societal impact of research. In general terms, for the countries of the region, less than 8% of the publications have been cited in public policy documents according to the Overton database, with the only exception of Andorra (11.06%), whose capacity for generating scientific knowledge is quite limited.
In countries with more than 10.000 published documents during the period 2019-2023, the proportion of female contributors exceeds 40% of the total number of researchers in 6 cases, being Argentina the country with the highest rate of female contributors of scientific documents (48.41%). At the same time, in all cases the percentage of papers related to the Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations Organization exceeds 30% of the total publications, with Peru (42.04%) and Ecuador (40.75%) ranking in the top positions.
