The scientific impact of developing nations

This paper analyzes science productivity for nine developing countries. Results show that these nations are reducing their science gap, with R&D investments and scientific impact growing at more than double the rate of the developed world. But this “catching up” hides a very uneven picture among these nations, especially on what they are able to generate in terms of impact and output relative to their levels of investment and available resources. Moreover, unlike what one might expect, it is clear that the size of the nations and the relative scale of their R&D investments are not the key drivers of efficiency

Mobility and International Collaboration: Case of the Mexican Scientific Diaspora.

We use a data set of Mexican researchers working abroad that are included in the Mexican National System of Researchers (SNI). Our diaspora sample includes 479 researchers, most of them holding postdoctoral positions in mainly seven countries: USA, Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Canada and Brazil. Their research output and impact is explored in order to determine their patterns of production, mobility and scientific collaboration as compared with previous studies of the SNI researchers in the periods 1991-2001 and 2003-2009. Our findings confirm that mobility has a strong impact on their international scientific collaboration. We found no substantial influence among the researchers that got their PhD degrees abroad from those trained in Mexican universities. There are significant differences among the areas of knowledge studied: biological sciences, physics and engineering have better production and impact rates than mathematics, geosciences, medicine, agrosciences, chemistry, social sciences and humanities. We found a slight gender difference in research production but Mexican female scientists are underrepresented in our diaspora sample. These findings would have policy implications for the recently established program that will open new academic positions for young Mexican scientists

Mainstream journals with the highest number of papers by the Mexican Diaspora in physics with their citations (closed to December 2013) and the respective JCR impact factors (2013).

<p>Mainstream journals with the highest number of papers by the Mexican Diaspora in physics with their citations (closed to December 2013) and the respective JCR impact factors (2013).</p

Distribution of researchers in the Mexican Diaspora by knowledge area, gender (numbers in parenthesis correspond to female scientists) age average and academic category in the SNI: w/o level, candidate (C), levels I, II and III.

<p>Distribution of researchers in the Mexican Diaspora by knowledge area, gender (numbers in parenthesis correspond to female scientists) age average and academic category in the SNI: w/o level, candidate (C), levels I, II and III.</p

Collaboration Network, using Netdraw from UCINET.

<p>We adjust the scaling/ordination from which we select the nearest Euclidian method. <b>Note:</b> We have positioned at the center of the "Fig. 1" the seven countries with the most relationships. Red circles correspond to countries of residence and blue squares to countries of scientific collaboration.</p