Cuban scientific production in the index of citations from emerging sources: Points to include in the evaluation of national science

ABSTRACT

Objective:

the study aims to determine the visibility and the impact of the Cuban scientific production in the Emerging Sources Citation Index to contribute as necessary to include this database in the evaluation system within the process of institutional scientific evaluation in Cuba.

Method:

from a descriptive bibliometric approach, we analyze the main data of the primary and citing scientific production that circulate by ESCI. The Cuban scientific production belongs to time frame covered by ESCI (2005-2021) and was delimited in the last 10 years (2012-2021).

Results:

when analyzing the 19 Cuban newspapers indexed by non-ESCI, it was obtained as a result that 3 Cuban newspapers from institutions of the province of Cienfuegos stand out as the most productive (Universidad y Sociedad, Conrado Magazine and Medisur), not the same, only University and Society and the Cuban Journal of Physics reach the highest values of the h-index for a value of 5. The ESCI is a database that allows a closer approximation of the evaluation of the research in Social Sciences, taking into consideration the thematic categories that most We represent the indexed Cuban scientific production. During the period from 2005 to 2021, ESCI makes 43.4% of the Cuban scientific production visible within the main collection of the WoS, which shows that not only the main indices should be taken into account for the evaluation of scientific production in Cuba. The Cuban scientific production in ESCI has had a growing trend where the Cuban newspapers indexed in this database represent 56% of the total volume analyzed. The Cuban research visible from the ESCI affects 94% of the thematic categories according to citing scientific production, where they are corroborated by 143 countries and where the Cuban research impacts 2,452 newspapers. 40% of the self-citations in this database come from Cuban newspapers.

Conclusions:

it is essential for the evaluation of two scientific processes in Cuba to include the ESCI database of the main WoS collection, taking into account the performance achieved since the beginning of the indexing of scientific production. It constitutes a source of information with levels of indexation and evaluation of the quality of journals. It is also important to consider self-citation as a phenomenon that can lead to inbreeding and harm future scientific visibility. This study presents for the first time the situation of Cuban magazines in ESCI.

KEYWORDS:
Emerging Sources Citation Index; ESCI; Cuba; scientific production; visibility and impact; bibliometrics