As happens every two years in April, the International Seminar on Quantitative and Qualitative Studies of Science and Technology "Professor Gilberto Sotolongo Aguilar," now in its seventh edition and held under the auspices of the biennial International Congress on Information, took place at the Palacio de Convenciones in Havana, Cuba. The 2014 Seminar began on April 15th with the inauguration of the poster session and ended on April 17th. The program included 47 presentations, 28 oral presentations, and 19 posters. As seen in previous years, there were many studies from Cuba and Mexico, but other countries were also represented such as Belgium-Hungary, Brazil, Peru and Spain.
The Call for Papers attracted research studies, review papers, and case studies completed or in progress related to the quantitative and/or qualitative studies of science and technology. Bibliometric, scientometric, informetric, patentometric and webometric studies were considered to be of particular relevance, without discounting the importance of qualitative analytical methods and approaches.
Presentations covered diverse themes, for example university rankings, scientific communication studies, public health, and marketing in information science, astronomy, and neurosciences, among others. Those related to issues of particular concern were of special interest to Latin American experts, such as quality of national databases and the representation of national publications in the most well-known databases, such as Web of Science and Scopus. Both aspects were considered significant to the use of mainstream sources for measuring local science. Another widely-commented topic was the decrease in the scientific and technological production of several of the countries in the region in the last three years.
Invited speakers were Dr. Wolfgang Glänzel, KU Leuven, Belgium and Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest with a talk entitled "Analysis of coauthorship patterns at the individual level" and Dr. Rogério Mugnaini from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, with a presentation called "Scientific communication in Brazil (1998-2012): Indexing, growth, flow and dispersion".
An important outcome of the VII Seminar is this monographic issue of the journal Transinformaçao with a selection of papers presented during the event. Although the proceedings of International Congress on Information include short articles in electronic format of the presentations at the Seminar, the publication of an extended version of these studies provides the opportunity not only to publicize the Seminar and encourage greater participation in the event but also for a wider audience to learn of current research in Latin America. In today's world, evaluation and accountability studies are increasingly demanded by research managers and science policy makers. For this reason alone, Latin America needs a body of research and researchers dedicated to advancing knowledge in the different metric specialties of information studies with specific emphasis on the needs and characteristics of science and technology in the region.
Authors of all papers accepted for oral presentation at the event were invited to submit an extended version of their study for possible publication in Transinformação giving special attention to theoretical aspects, analytical development and discussion of the results. Submitted manuscripts were externally peerreviewed by the journal, and 11 articles were selected to make up this special issue.
The first two studies clearly show contrasting levels of data aggregation. While the first by Wolfgang Glänzel looks at co-authorship patterns of individual researchers using a range of bibliometric methods and indicators, the second by Mugnaini and co-authors analyses large data sets of Brazilian articles to understand growth, flow, and dispersion of journals across Bradford zones over a period of 15 years.
Social network analysis was present in a number of studies; among these is the paper by Pinto and Aguilar who analysed Latin American production on this subject from 1990 to 2013, giving special attention to contributing countries, universities and authors.
The study by Collazo-Reyes and co-authors used a qualitative approach to analyse the citation practices of the Mexican production in the field of astronomy from 1952 to 1972. Using references as means for semiotic interpretation, the study looked at the relationship between marks or signs associated with local affiliations and that of modern scientific communication patterns.
Three studies focussed on specific topics. ZaccaGonzález and co-authors developed production, visibility, and collaboration indicators for health research for the period from 2003 to 2011 using the Scopus database. Freitas and co-authors analysed specific concepts in knowledge organization while González-Valiente studied marketing in the field of information disciplines.
The special issue closes with four technological studies. The first by Salguiero and Flores is qualitative in nature and makes a detailed comparison of 13 different open access tools for the retrieval and analysis of information used in a course in the area of Applied Cybernetics. Patentometrics, a subject little studied in Brazil, is the focus of the other contributions; in the case of Arreortúa and co-authors it is applied to vegetable oil combustion; Cabrera and co-authors study water and wastewater treatment technology; and Díaz-Pérez and co-authors study shale gas. All four use the International Patent Classification; Salguiero and Flores, and Cabrera and co-authors also use social network analysis.
The Seminar which will celebrate its eighth edition in 2016 continues to be an essential venue to bring together specialists from Latin America to present and discuss their research on relevant topics for the region.
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
Sep-Dec 2014
