Producción científica en ciencias de la salud en los países de América Latina, 2006-2015: análisis a partir de SciELO

Abstract

The importance of studying scientific production in the health area is valuable, since the publication of journals in the Latin American region allows measuring and assessing the regional scientific effort, as well as identifying the most active nuclei of production. From a bibliometric, observational, cross-sectional and descriptive study, based on records from the SciELO database, period 2006 -2015, it was found that Brazil stands out as the main country in scientific production in health, with a participation of 58.55 % compared to the total, followed by Cuba and Colombia with 10.52 and 8.30 %, respectively. Likewise, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Peru and Uruguay contribute to the production of publications in a proportion of 1.03 % and 6.09 %; meanwhile, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Guatemala, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico have a share below 1.00 % of the total for the region. There are three countries with the highest levels of scientific production (Brazil, Cuba and Colombia) that contribute 77.57 % of the total of publications made, the rest of 17 of the 20 Latin American countries studied contribute 22.63 % of the total scientific production.