Are the BRIC and MITS countries improving their presence in the international science? Elba Mauleon*, Daniela De Filippo** *
[email protected] Postdoctoral Fellowship supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education through FECYT **
[email protected] LEMI (Department of Library and Information Science), Carlos III University of Madrid, Madrid 126, Getafe, Spain
Introduction In 2001, the Goldman Sachs group coined the name of BRIC countries to group under this abbreviation the more dynamic emergent economies of the international market: Brazil, Russia, India and China (Wilson and Purushothaman, 2003). Ten years later, the same group proposes a new abbreviation, the MIST to talk about the economies of Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey. Nowadays BRIC and MIST countries are recognized as the most dynamic countries, which are facing well the global crisis. An interesting question is whether this growth can also be evidenced in the scientific and technological fields. We would like to explore the ability of these countries to integrate into the international scientific community and strengthen their positions in the coming years. Purpose of research According with this, the objective of this work is to determine if these emergent countries show the same push in the scientific and technological dimensions than the one described in their economic activity. In this sense, the goals of this investigation are: - To explore the evolution of the scientific output of BRIC and MIST countries in the two last decades. What was the evolution of the world share of BRICS and MITS scientific output? - To measure the impact of the scientific output of these countries in the international scientific community. Finally, this work aims at offering data to detect if BRIC and MIST countries are the new strategic actors that will replace the countries that traditionally have led the scientific and technological activity. In this sense, the following indicators were calculated for each country: a) Scientific activity indicators: Annual evolution of the number of documents Productivity: scientific production per million inhabitants
b) Influence and impact of the knowledge produced by BRIC and MIST countries: Annual evolution of the number of citations per document. Percentage of non-cited documents. c) Socioeconomic indicators: Annual evolution of the Gross Domestic Expenditure on Research and Development. d) International scientific influence of knowledge producing and diffusing institutions: Annual evolution of the number of journals from these countries included in JCR. Collaboration habits: percentage of documents in national, international and without collaboration. Number of academic institutions from BRIC and MITS countries in the international ranks. e) Specialization Index: the percentage of documents and their annual evolution by broad scientific area was calculated. Methods One of the most visible results of the scientific activity is the diffusion of the investigation in peer review journals of recognized prestige. In agreement with this premise, the scientific publications of BRIC and MIST countries have been obtained using as source of data the international database Web of Science (WoS). The use of this database allows us to obtain the scientific production of these countries in its more international scope, which turns out essential to analyze the integration of these countries into the international scientific community. Another aspect considered in this work has been the presence of higher education institutions from these countries in international rankings, such as the ARWU ranking -elaborated by the University of Shanghai- and THE -produced by TIMEs-. Finally additional sources –as UNESCO, World Bank- were consulted to obtain data related to other R&D activities. The period of analysis was 19902010.
Preliminary results Scientific production From 1990 to the present time a remarkable growth in the number of publications of the BRIC countries is observed. Its scientific production in WoS increased from 69,764 documents in 1990 (7% of the world) up to 311,077 (17% of the world) in 2010. Of the four, China and Brazil present the greater growth in the period. On the other hand, the scientific production of the MIST represent 5,020 publications in 1990 (0,5% of WoS) and 93,169 in 2010 (5% of the world). These data show the increasing international visibility they have gained. The significant growth of production can be explained, in part, by the increasing number of journals published in these countries and included in JCR. Table 1 shows the evolution of the number of journals and the percentage each group represents in the total world. It can be seen that while the G7 is still the predominant group, emerging countries have been gaining ground. Table 1. Number of journals in JCR by countries COUNTRY Brazil Russia India China BRIC %BRIC vs JCR Mexico Indonesia Turkey South Korea MITS %MITS Total JCR Germany Canada USA France Italy Japan UK G7 %G7 vs JCR Journals in JCR
1997 9 96 37 20 162
SCI 2004 16 104 47 71 238
2010 89 147 94 138 468
1997 2 9 5 3 19
SSCI 2004 2 8 3 3 16
2010 20 6 5 6 37
3,26
3,99
5,8
1,14
0,93
1,35
5 0 1
7 0 3
28 0 49
4 0 1
4 0 1
13 0 12
6
27
75
0
2
12
12
37
152
5
7
25
0,24
0,62
1,88
0,30
0,41
0,91
381 73 1915 153 51 133 999 3705
427 75 2289 143 65 160 1267 4426
545 94 2724 189 121 207 1592 5472
52 31 1010 23 1 9 325 1451
52 28 982 17 1 7 419 1506
110 26 1229 25 13 8 725 2136
74,65
74,15
67,78
86,78
87,97
78,21
4963
5969
8073
1672
1712
2731
Academic visibility The presence of higher education institutions of BRIC and MIST countries in international rankings is also a reflection of their increasing visibility (Table 2). In less than a decade, not only the number of universities
among the world's leading has increased, but also the position of those already included has improved. Table 2. Presence of BRIC and MIST universities in international rankings ARWU
THE
Brazil
2003 (500 univ) 4
2010 (500 univ) 7
2004 (200 univ) 0
2010 (200 univ) 2
Russia
0
2
1
2
India
1
2
0
1
China
12
29
6
16
Mexico
1
1
0
0
Country
Indonesia
0
0
Turkey
1
Without data 1
0
0
South Korea
8
10
3
4
Discussion and conclusions Throughout this study we have observed a remarkable growth of the BRIC and MITS countries not only through economic indicators but also in the scientific and academic fields. The notable increase of international production, the upward trend in the impact and visibility of these publications and the growing presence of their universities in the international rankings suggests these “developing economies” are evolving towards "knowledge economies" (Dahlman and Aubert, 2001). We consider that these countries are the new players that will have a predominant role in science and technology in the coming decades. References Cooper, J (2006) “Of BRICs and brains: Comparing Russia with China, India, and other populous emerging economies” EURASIAN GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMICS, 47 (3): 255-284 Dahlman, C.y Aubert,J.E China and the Knowledge Economy. Seizing the 21st Century. Washington, DC: World Bank, WDI Development Studies, 2001. UNESCO (2010) El Informe de la UNESCO sobre la Ciencia, 2010 UNESCO, Paris www.unesco.org/science/psd Wagner, C; Kit Wong, S (2012) “Unseen science? Representation of BRICs in global science“ Scientometrics 90 (3): 1001-1013 Wilson, D. y Purushothaman, R. Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050. New York, NY: Goldman Sachs, Global Economics Paper No. 99, October 1, 2003.
