Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, recently called attention to
the clear inequalities in science between developing and developed countries and to the
challenges of building bridges across these gaps that should bring the United Nations and
the world scientific community closer to each other (Annan 2003). Mr. Annan stressed the
importance of reducing the inequalities in science between developed and developing
countries, asserting that “This unbalanced distribution of scientific activity generates
serious problems not only for the scientific community in the developing countries, but for
development itself.” Indeed, Mr. Annan's sentiments have also been echoed recently by
several scientists, who present overwhelming evidence for the disparity in scientific
output between the developing and already developed countries (Gibbs 1995; May 1997;
Goldemberg 1998; Riddoch 2000). For example, recent United Nations Educational, Scientific,
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) estimates (UNESCO 2001) indicate that, in 1997, the
developed countries accounted for some 84% of the global investment in scientific research
and development, had approximately 72% of the world researchers, and produced approximately
88% of all scientific and technical publications registered by the Science Citation Index
(SCI). North America and Europe clearly dominate the number of scientific publications
produced annually, with 36.6% and 37.5%, respectively, worldwide (UNESCO 2001).
North America and Europe clearly dominate the number of scientific
publications produced annually.
It is rather obvious that richer countries are able to invest more resources in science
and therefore account for the largest number of publications. It is also likely that there
is a statistical bias on the part of the SCI as a bibliometric database, since it
represents North American and European publications far better than those of the rest of
the world (Gibbs 1995; May 1997; Alonso and Fernández-Juricic 2001; Vohora and Vohora
2001). But is the disparity in scientific contributions between the developed and
developing worlds actually remaining unchanged or even increasing, as Mr. Annan has
implied? A closer look at the trends over the last decade reveals important advances in
developing countries. For example, Latin America and China, although representing,
respectively, only 1.8% and 2% of scientific publications worldwide, have increased the
number of their publications between 1990 and 1997 by 36% and 70%, respectively, which is a
much higher percentage than the increments reached by Europe (10%) and industrial Asia
(26%). The percentage of global scientific publications from North America actually
decreased by 8% over the same period (UNESCO 2001).
Publishing Trends in the Americas
Using the SCI databases produced by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), as
well as data compiled by the Red Iberoamericana de Indicadores de Ciencia y Tecnología
(RICYT), we examined the differences in the number and proportion of scientific
publications between the developed world and the developing world from 1990 until 2000,
focusing on the Americas as a case study. Not surprisingly, there was a huge disparity in
the number of publications from 1990 until 2000, with the United States contributing the
lion's share (84.2%), followed by Canada (10.35%). Latin America as a whole contributed
only 5.45% to the total number of scientific publications in these ten years (RICYT
2002).
The total number of publications, however, is not necessarily the best measure for
assessing scientific productivity or technical advances (May 1997). More relevant
measurements for these factors include the proportional change in the number of
publications and the total number of publications when corrected for investment in research
and development (May 1997). The proportional change in the number of publications, using
1990 as a comparison, revealed that scientific publishing in Latin America increased the
most rapidly in the Americas, far outpacing the United States and Canada (Figure 1).
Further analyses, correcting the number of overall publications for the amount of money
invested in research and development for each region, also show that, in contrast to both
Canada and United States, the trend in Latin America has been an increase in relative
output throughout the 1990s (Figure 2). Moreover, when taking into account the amount of
research money available to researchers, Latin America actually out-published the United
States and Canada by the year 2000 (Figure 2). Although the cost of research is undoubtedly
cheaper in the developing world due to relatively low researcher salaries, overhead and
other work standards, these factors do not explain the substantial increase in the number
of publications per amount of money allocated to research and development in Latin America,
particularly from 1995 until 2000 (Figure 2).
Other relative indicators of scientific productivity, such as the number of publications
picked up by the SCI in relation to the number of scientists in a particular country, also
demonstrate that such developing regions as Latin America are making substantial
contributions to science, despite the fact that the average proportion of gross domestic
product (GDP) invested in science in Latin America throughout this 10-year period was only
21% of the amount invested in United States (RICYT 2002). Indeed, this scientific
productivity is remarkable when we compare it with the relatively low investment in science
itself as compared with the GDP of Latin America as a whole. In fact, Albornoz (2001)
concluded that, as a group, Latin America could afford to invest a much higher proportion
of its resources in scientific research and development. Latin American investment in
research and development represented only 0.59% of the regional GDP in 1998, a very weak
effort compared with that of the United States (2.84%) and Canada (1.5%).
Among Latin American countries, there is a high degree of variability in publication
rate as well as in financial investment in science and technology. Some countries have
performed particularly well. For example, Uruguay, Chile, Panama, and Cuba averaged,
respectively, 6.8, 5.3, 5.2, and 3.4 publications per million dollars of research and
development investment in the 10 years studied, which is notoriously high compared with
United States (1.5) and even Canada (3.3) (RICYT 2002). Other countries, such as Costa
Rica, Cuba, Brazil, and Chile, have invested a much greater proportion of their GDP in
research and development than the other countries of this region (Albornoz 2001).
Why has the number of publications per dollar invested in research and
development been increasing in Latin America while decreasing in United States and
Canada?
Explaining the Increase in Publishing Productivity in Latin America
One potential explanation for the increase in scientific productivity in Latin America
is that scientific development during the 1990s was particularly strong for many countries
of this region. Indeed, this would explain the rapid rise in the number of publications in
Latin America compared with the relatively flat increases in the United States and Canada,
which were publishing just as well at the beginning of the decade. A potentially more
important question, however, is why the number of publications per dollar invested in
research and development has been increasing in Latin America while decreasing in the
United States and Canada. This pattern could be the result of a variety of factors, none of
which are mutually exclusive. It is possible that publishing in international journals as a
measure of scientific productivity is becoming more important in Latin America. Increased
funding to the most productive scientists from the national science development programs
might have been an important stimulus. International cooperation resulting in more
scientific collaborations among scientists in Latin America, Europe, and the United States
may also have increased the relative number of publications in Latin America. In contrast,
the decreasing trends in the number of publications per investment dollar in Canada and
United States could reflect a trend towards more costly research in larger scientific
programs.
Scientific Impact from Latin America
What, exactly, is the relative impact of such developing regions as Latin America on the
scientific community? We used SCI 2001 data to examine the proportion of publications in
the area of ecology (including the fields of evolutionary biology, conservation biology,
and global change biology) between 1990 and 2002 in both the two top general science
journals (
Nature and
Science ; with impact factors of 27.96 and 23.33, respectively) and in
the 20 top ecological journals (with impact factors of 10.51–2.47) (ISI 2001a). We credited
a region with a publication if any of the authors were affiliated with institutions from
that region. Thus, more than one region would receive credit for a single publication if
that publication had been written by multiple authors from institutions of different
regions.
For the top 20 ecological journals, the American subcontinents of South, Central, and
North America accounted for 62% of the publications worldwide. Within the Americas,
however, Latin America represented only 6%, while Canada and United States accounted,
respectively, for 13% and 82% of the top 20 ecological publications. When we examined the
data as contributions to the top 10 ecological journals (impact factors 10.51–3.31) versus
the top 11–20 (impact factors 3.28–2.47), the Latin American countries contributed nearly
twice as many publications to journals in the second category (8% in the top 11–20 compared
with 4% in the top 10). These findings suggest that publications from such developing
regions as Latin America are falling short of reaching the top journals. In contrast, the
United States contributed somewhat more publications to the top 10 journals (84%) than the
top 11–20 journals (79%). The difference in the proportion of publications contributed by
the United States to the top 10 and top 20 journals was even more pronounced when we
examined it in respect to worldwide publications. In this case, the United States
contributed 60% of the publications to the top 10 journals and only 40% of the publications
to the top 11–20 journals.
Interestingly, the proportion of publications from Latin America, the United States, and
Canada across all subject areas in
Science and
Nature were nearly identical to those of the top 20 ecological journals.
In
Science and
Nature , Latin America had 7% of the publications within the Americas
versus 6% in the top 20 ecological journals, whereas the United States and Canada had 81%
versus 82% and 12% versus 13%, respectively. These similarities suggest that the Latin
American researchers are not shying away from the two top-ranked general science journals.
However, publishing in
Science and
Nature was not enough to gain prominence, as evidenced by the number of
citations of these researchers. The latest list of the 247 most-cited researchers in
ecology and environmental sciences emphasizes the overwhelming contributions of authors
from North America (73%) and Europe (21%) (ISI 2001b). No researcher working in a Latin
American institution was included in the remaining 6%. Overall, these data indicate that
the scientific output in the field of ecology in Latin America is having a relatively low
impact in the international scientific community and is underrepresented in the top
international journals, despite its robust productivity as measured by the number of
publications per researcher funding amount. Similar findings were also reported for Asia
(Swinbanks et al. 1997) and thus could be a general phenomenon in the developing world.
Although there are outstanding scientific researchers in the developing world who
independently are making important contributions to the international scientific community,
they are the exception. Why, in general, do Latin American scientists often fail to reach
the top journals or become amongst the most cited researchers in their fields? One
possibility is that the main research agendas between both regions are somewhat different
and that the top journals, which are published in the developed world, respond more to the
scientific mainstream of the developed regions. This is not to suggest any sort of
conspiracy, but rather it implies that the perception of the most important science is
linked to the region and that because the major funding agencies as well as most prominent
journals share a similar economic region, they also share the same perception of what
science is most interesting to them. Another consideration is that more local journals from
developed regions are listed by the SCI than similar journals from developing regions
(Gibbs 1995). Consequently, there are more high-profile regional publication opportunities
available to scientists from the developed region, whereas much of the research published
locally in the developing world is overlooked. But it takes more than publishing good
papers to become a highly cited scientist. It requires attending international meetings and
introducing novel research findings in multiple scientific forums. Funding these
activities, however, requires a greater proportion of research money being spent on
meetings for researchers in the developing compared with the developed world.
A Long Road Yet to Travel
The positive trends in scientific productivity in Latin America should not be
misinterpreted as a reason to be unconcerned about the existing gap highlighted by Mr.
Annan. There are many compelling reasons for the push to increase scientific input from the
developing world (Goldemberg 1998; Annan 2003). One is that science, as a discipline, would
benefit from the contributions of many disparate groups around the world, rather than being
dominated by two geographic regions. Many scientific problems could be solved much more
readily with the cooperation and scientific insight of scientists from developing regions.
Climate change and biodiversity research, for example, urgently need the scientific input
from those developing regions that are so important for these global processes. It is also
critical for the developing world to promote, through research and publications, those
areas of concern that are having a proportionally greater scientific and social impact upon
them. There are now examples in which research on priority areas for the developing nations
can actually become pioneering work in areas neglected by the research agenda of the
industrialized world. This has been the case for research on renewable energy sources in
Brazil (Goldemberg 1998) and biomedical sciences in Cuba (Castro Díaz-Balart 2002). These
examples are important not only for those regions of the developing world, but are also in
themselves scientific innovations that can greatly advance the knowledge of the rest of the
world.
Climate change and biodiversity research urgently need the scientific
input from those developing regions that are so important for global processes.
Although the evidence presented here demonstrates that there is a long way to go before
developing countries contribute a more equitable share to the international scientific
community, there are also reasons to be optimistic. The relative increase in the number of
publications, especially when corrected for the amount of money available in research and
development, demonstrates that many developing countries are heading in the right
direction. The extremely high scientific productivity of many developing nations, corrected
for and despite the rather limited availability of funds, suggests that increased funding
to the sciences will be an excellent investment by developing nations in terms of
publications as a measure of scientific output, particularly if these publications can
target the journals that have the greatest impact. Although there may still be a long road
to travel, we feel optimistic that the bridges mentioned by Mr. Annan are slowly being
built.
