São Paulo universities lead academic production ranking

USP, Unesp and Unicamp were the Brazilian universities that published the most articles from 2007 to 2011, according to SIR World Report 2013. UFABC’s scientific output had the greatest impact.

By Karina Toledo

Agência FAPESP – Three São Paulo institutions, Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) and Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp), led the ranking of Brazilian universities that published the most scientific articles between the years 2007 and 2011, according to the most recent edition of the SIR World Report, released in July by Scimago Lab. When considering the impact of an institution’s scientific production, the Brazilian institution that stood out the most was Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC).

The SIR World Report 2013 evaluated five years' scientific production from higher education institutions worldwide that had published at least 100 articles on the Scopus database in 2011. Produced by Dutch publisher Elsevier, Scopus is considered one of the largest scientific databases in the world and includes more than 20,000 specialized periodicals.

When the total number of publications is taken into consideration (excluding articles by science academies, hospitals, foundations and research centers), USP is the top ranking Brazilian institution, occupying the fifth place worldwide, with 48,156 published articles between 2007 and 2011. Harvard University took first place, with 80,467 publications, followed by Tokyo University (51,796), University of Toronto (48,944) and Tsinghua University (48,396).

USP’s Dean of Research, Marco Antonio Zago, noted that the institution has a long tradition of valuing research associated with quality teaching. “USP invests a considerable portion of its budget in supporting research, in addition to garnering funding from agencies like FAPESP, CNPq and FINEP. In the last few years, USP has intensified its relationship with significant foreign universities. When it comes to applied research, USP's cooperation with the production sector and various companies is also evolving, along with other forms of intellectual production. In this environment, FAPESP’s relationship is very relevant, not only in terms of the resources our researchers garner from agencies but also in terms of the competitive and quality control component introduced into our production,” he added.

The second-highest ranked Brazilian university in the global ranking was Unicamp, which came in 135th place, with 17,130 articles published. In the 137th position was Unesp, with 16,998 articles.

For Gláucia Maria Pastore, Dean of Research at Unicamp, these results demonstrate the power of the three state universities and the relevance of their scientific production.

“If we take into consideration the size of the institutions and the fact that Unicamp is a much smaller university than USP, our second-place position reflects the importance of our scientific production, which spans all areas of knowledge, and the major investment made in exploring the frontiers of knowledge. This is a good ranking, but we want to continually improve, and to do so, the Dean of Research has worked to integrate several research groups so we can obtain more promising results,” affirmed Pastore.

“The scientific production of these three São Paulo institutions accounts for 56% (82,284 publications) of the articles published by the 10 best-placed Brazilian universities (148,047 publications),” noted Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, FAPESP’s scientific director.

With only 3,956 publications, UFABC came in 1,345th place in this category. But on the “Q1,” which measures the percentage of articles that a university published in the world’s most influential scholarly journals, the institution leapt to first place among Brazilian universities, with 55% of its articles published in influential journals.

In the Q1 category, UFABC is followed by the Universidade do Vale do Paraíba (Univap), with 45%; Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp), with 40.6%; and USP, with 39.1%. In this category, Unicamp came in 10th place among Brazilian universities, with 37.5%. Unesp landed at 34th, with 30.5% of works published in influential journals.

Among the 10 top-ranking Brazilian universities in the Q1 category, six are located in São Paulo State: UFABC, Univap, Unifesp, USP, UFSCar and Unicamp. If one considers the volume of articles in category Q1, five São Paulo universities are among the top 10 Brazilian universities. USP topped the list, with 17,985 publications in the most influential journals, and Unicamp came in second, with 5,967.

Under the “normalized impact” classification, which measures how many times the works of each institution are cited compared with the annual average, UAFBC came in first place again among Brazilian institutions, with a score of 1.67, which means that the institution’s articles had a citation average 67% greater than the global average.

Next in the Brazilian ranking is Universidade Estadual da Paraíba (0.95), followed by Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (0.93) and Universidade Estadual do Sudoeste da Bahia (0.92). USP came in ninth place among Brazilian institutions in this category, with 0.86. Unicamp came in 12th, with 0.84, and Unesp 35th, with 0.70.

In the “international collaboration” category, UFABC was once again the top-ranked Brazilian institution, followed by Pontifícia Universidade Católica (PUC) do Rio de Janeiro, Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz (BA) and Universidade Federal de Alagoas (Ufal). USP came in 7th place; Unicamp, 22nd; and Unesp, 40th.

With 20.3% of its scientific production in the 10% most-cited institutions worldwide, UFABC also leads in the “excellence” category among Brazilian institutions. “UAFBC is new and is on the path to academic quality, even as it faces the challenge of growing,” commented Brito Cruz.

Research support policy

According to Klaus Capelle, the Dean of Research UFABC, there are four factors that explain the institution’s good performance. The first is the high quality of the faculty, which entirely comprises researchers with PhDs hired solely under exclusive contracts.

“Our second advantage is that we are a very new university, just seven years old. Because of this, all our laboratories – which, for the time being, are few – are cutting edge facilities. And the equipment was largely acquired through projects funded by FAPESP,” explained Capelle.

Another reason for the good academic performance, notes Capelle, is its internal policy for supporting research. The institution reserves part of the funding it receives from the Education Ministry to offer scientific initiation scholarships and master’s, doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships, in addition to grants for interdisciplinary research and the establishment of strategic centers.

Lastly, Capelle stresses that the university’s model of organization, which eliminates the division of its colleges into departments, thus fostering interaction among its researchers.

“The differentiation between what is Physics, Chemistry and Biology represents the way we viewed knowledge in the 19th century. Because we built the university in the first few years of the 21st century, we abandoned the idea of departments. This makes the interdisciplinary research particularly strong at UFABC because there are no artificial barriers that separate a materials engineer, for example, from a solid state physicist,” affirmed Capelle.

CBPF leads among research institutions

In the general list of all research institutions in Brazil, as compiled in the SIR World Report 2013, the highlight was the Brazilian Center for Physics Research (CBPF), which led in the Q1, normalized impact and international collaboration categories.

In the Q1 category, the National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA) came in second, followed by UFABC, A.C. Camargo Cancer and the National Cancer Institute. In the normalized impact category, UFABC, the National Institute of Science and Translational Technology in Medicine, the Ministry of Health and Sociedade Beneficente Israelita Brasileira Albert Einstein rounded out the top five spots.

In the international collaboration category, IMPA took second, followed by the National Laboratory for Scientific Computation, UFABC and the National Institute for Space Research.

More information is available at: www.scimagoir.com.