Meneghini, R; Packer, AL. 2010. THE EXTENT OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY AUTHORSHIP OF ARTICLES ON SCIENTOMETRICS AND BIBLIOMETRICS IN BRAZIL. INTERCIENCIA 35 (7): 510-514

[Eugene Garfield]

Meneghini, R; Packer, AL. 2010. THE EXTENT OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY 
AUTHORSHIP OF ARTICLES ON SCIENTOMETRICS AND BIBLIOMETRICS IN 
BRAZIL. INTERCIENCIA 35 (7): 510-514.

Author Full Name(s): Meneghini, Rogerio; Packer, Abel L.
Language: English
Document Type: Article

Author Keywords: Bibliometrics; Citation; H Index; Infometrics; Information 
Science; SciELO; Scientometrics; Web of Science
KeyWords Plus: SCIENCE; PUBLICATION

Abstract: The publications in scientometrics and bibliometrics with Brazilian 
authorship expanded exponentially in the 1990-2006 period, reaching 13 times 
in the Web of Science database and 19.5 times in the Google Scholar 
database. This increase is rather superior to that of the total Brazilian scientific 
production in the same time period (5.6 times in the Web of Science). Some 
characteristics to be noticed in this rise are: 1) The total number of articles 
during this period was 197; in that, 78% were published in 57 Brazilian journals 
and 22% in 13 international journals. 2) The national and international articles 
averaged 4.3 and 5.9 citations/article, respectively; two journals stood out 
among these, the national Ciencia da Informacao (44 articles averaging 6.7 
citations/article) and the international Scientometrics (32 articles averaging 6.2 
citations/article). 3) The articles encompass an impressive participation of 
authors from areas other than information science; only one-fourth of the 
authors are bound to the information science field, the remaining ones being 
distributed among the areas of humanities/business administration, 
biology/biomedicine, health and hard sciences. The occurrence of adventitious 
authors at this level of multidisciplinarity is uncommon in science. However, the 
possible benefits of such patterns are not clear in view of a fragmented 
intercommunication among the authors, as noticed through the citations. The 
advantages of changing this trend and of using other scientometric and 
bibliometric databases, such as SciELO, to avoid an almost exclusive use of the 
Web of Science database, are discussed.

Addresses: [Meneghini, Rogerio] Univ Sao Paulo, BR-05508 Sao Paulo, Brazil; 
[Meneghini, Rogerio; Packer, Abel L.] Univ Fed Sao Paulo, SciELO Fundacao 
Apoio, Sao Paulo, Brazil; [Meneghini, Rogerio] Univ Fed Sao Paulo, Dept Hlth 
Informat, Sao Paulo, Brazil; [Packer, Abel L.] Syracuse Univ, Syracuse, NY 
13244 USA

Reprint Address: Meneghini, R, Univ Sao Paulo, BR-05508 Sao Paulo, Brazil.
E-mail Address: rogerio.meneghini at scielo.org; packer at gmail.com
ISSN: 0378-1844