Brazil has 1,294 scientists among the most influential in the world – 10/19/2023 – Science

The number of researchers from Brazilian institutions on the list of scientists with the greatest impact in the world almost quadrupled in five years. It jumped from 342 in 2017 to 1,294 in 2022 (an increase of 278%).

The ranking is published by researcher John Ioannidis, from Stanford University (USA), in partnership with Elsevier, the largest scientific publisher in the world.

These 1,294 scientists are part of the 100,000 most influential or included among the top 2% in each sub-area of ​​knowledge, according to a 2022 survey.

Considering both indicators, the final list contains 210,198 researchers. Brazil thus has 0.61% of the total, occupying 25th position in the global ranking.

In previous years, there were 1,212 (2021), 1,132 (2020) and 853 (2019). Data for 2018 is not available.

The five countries with the most influential scientists are the United States (69,258), China (23,484), the United Kingdom (16,797), Germany (10,087) and Canada (7,889).

In the survey, it is possible to evaluate the scientist’s influence through the impact of his scientific career and also analyze indicators from specific years. The update, released on October 4th, brings the world’s leading researchers with citations until the end of 2022.

Among the Brazilian scientists listed are names who were prominent in the fight against Covid, such as the epidemiologist and professor at the USP Faculty of Medicine Paulo Lotufo; the researcher at the Institute of Tropical Medicine Ester Sabino, responsible for sequencing the coronavirus; Ricardo Gazzinelli, coordinator of CT Vacinas, linked to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and responsible for the first 100% Brazilian vaccine against Covid; and cardiologist Ludhmila Hajjar, who treated dozens of patients during the pandemic and refused the invitation to join the Ministry of Health in the government of former president Jair Bolsonaro.

The assessment of scientists’ influence takes into account an index called c-score, which consists of a calculation based on six parameters (such as H index of citation; Hm index of co-authorship citation; and number of articles cited as sole author, first author or last author), taken from Scopus, considered the largest database of abstracts and citations of articles and scientific journals, with more than 35 thousand titles.

The final value allows a standardized analysis of the scientist’s impact, instead of simply considering the number of citations, explains the author. It further divides the assessment into 22 areas and 174 subareas of knowledge, including science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts and humanities.

Paulo Lotufo states that this result reinforces the importance of valuing collaboration between researchers and multidisciplinarity. “The Center for Clinical and Epidemiological Research is a central, multi-user Research Support Center and we currently want to expand the scope further with more collaborations,” he said.

When comparing research institutions, USP is the institution with the greatest scientific impact, with 244 scientists listed, followed by Unicamp, with 89, and Unesp (Universidade Estadual Paulista), with 67.

Among federal universities, at the top of the list are UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais), with 64, UFRGS (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul) and UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), with 54 each. , Unifesp (Federal University of São Paulo) and UFSC (Federal University of Santa Catarina), with 26 each, and UnB (University of Brasília), with 23. Fiocruz also has 30 researchers listed.

There is, however, a considerable difference between the areas of knowledge. Medical sciences, engineering and technology have a greater impact due to differences in bibliographic metrics, says the president of SBPC (Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science), Renato Janine Ribeiro.

“Publication in the humanities focuses much more on single-authored books and not on articles with collective authorship, which reduces the number of citations from these authors. So this metric is not suitable for the impact of the humanities”, he states.

In the case of public health and related areas, there are several publications in local magazines, focusing on illnesses or regional problems, says demographer and professor at Harvard University, Márcia Castro, columnist for Sheet.

“We have a publication that is excellent in the area of ​​demography, but the impact [global] is small. So it’s clear that, if we consider publications in top journals, such as Science, Nature, the technology, engineering and biomedicine bias will appear”, he says.

Areas such as biodiversity and environmental sciences, considered priorities in a world facing climate change and the impacts of human action, have a high number of scientists among the most influential, among them Paulo Artaxo, who is part of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for UN Climate Change), researcher Miguel Trefaut Rodrigues, from the USP Biosciences Institute and one of the country’s leading lizard experts, and Hussam Zaher, from the USP Zoology Museum, who was at the forefront of the discovery of a fossil snake dinosaur devourer.

In these areas, publications tend to receive several citations for presenting an unprecedented scientific discovery, in the case of describing new species, or exploring broad environmental problems, with a direct impact on the lives of thousands of people.

A study released earlier this year shows how scientific productivity in Brazil fell for the first time in 2022, reaching the same level as Ukraine, which has been at war with Russia since February last year.

For the authors of the study, the drop in Brazilian scientific production was a consequence of cuts in science promoted by the Bolsonaro administration.

Helena Nader, president of ABC (Brazilian Academy of Sciences), says that the evolution of Brazilian scientists on the list of the most influential in the world is remarkable, especially considering the situation of the last four years.

“It is very important that we have reached almost 1,300 scientists on the list of the most influential in the world, despite the misery that national science has gone through. This reminds us how the achievements of national science are not absolute”, he assesses.