Indicadores cienciométricos na produção científica da medicina brasileira

Abstract

Systematic evaluations of the scientific production of researchers in the different areas of activity can subsidize the optimization of resource allocation and promotion in the different areas of knowledge. In this perspective, when quantifying the bibliometric indicators of researchers, scientometrics becomes an important evaluation method, in the national scope of Science and Technology (S & T) indicators. The objective of this study was to characterize the profile and the technical and scientific production of the research productivity fellows of the National Council of Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) in Medicine, with emphasis in the areas of Neurosciences, Infectious and Parasitic Diseases (DIP) and Endocrinology /Metabolism. This is a quantitative, documentary study that used public data from the curriculum lattes of 542 researchers, with active scholarships in the triennium 2015-2017. The variables of interest were: gender, scholarship category (1 and 2), geographic distribution, link institution, doctoral completion time, orientation of students of scientific initiation, master's and doctorate, scientific production and its impact (articles indexed in Web of Science and Scopus databases, periodic impact factor and H-index). The statistical analysis was performed in the IBM SPSSTM version 24.0 program. Of the 542 fellows, 94 (17.34%) were categorized in the area of Neurosciences, 51 (9.40%) in Infectious and Parasitic Diseases and 44 (8.10%) in Endocrinology / Metabolism. The scientific production was consistent in the three areas: in the Neurosciences the average number of articles per researcher was 175.40, in the DIP it was 138.98 and in Endocrinology / Metabolism 138.13. Also, there was an expressive training of human resources in the three areas, with a greater number for Neurosciences: 1,329 master's degrees and 970 doctoral degrees. In the three areas studied, a concentration of researchers in the Southeast region (69.31%) of the country and predominance of men was also identified, with the exception of Endocrinology, in which the majority of the scholarship recipients were female. In addition, there was prevalence of scholarships in category 2 and higher scientific production in the last five years of the career. Most of the researchers are concentrated in a few public higher education institutions, with 58.50% of the Neuroscience area being in three institutions; 54.91% of the DIP area are in four and 72.70% of Endocrinology / Metabolism are also concentrated in four. Among the most concentrated public institutions, the University of São Paulo (USP) stands out, with a total of 52 fellows linked to the three areas investigated in the current study. The results showed that the medical researchers have an important scientific production, but there is a concentration of research activities in a few institutions. The knowledge of the profile of research productivity in the country contributes to the formulation of specific strategies to improve the scientific production in the medical area in an equitable manner, directing the demand for resources to finance projects allocated in several Institutions of the five Brazilian regions.