Evaluation of productivity and co-authorship of professors of the Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Biológicas: Bioquímica/UFRGS

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate some characteristics of scientific production by the productivity and co-authorship indicators in the context of the Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Biológicas: Bioquímica (PPGBioq), of Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in three CAPES evaluations (Triennial 2010, Triennial 2013 and Quadrennial 2017).

Method: This is a micro-level Bibliometric study, with a quantitative approach, which applies production indicators (1,375 documents indexed in the Coleta Capes, Sucupira Platform, and Web of Science) and co-authorship (collaboration), from 2007 to 2016.

Result: The distribution of documents per professor is asymmetric. It was found that a small group of professors was responsible for producing 51.4% of the documents. The PPGBioq/UFRGS presented a very expressive collaborative profile, with 63.3% of documents containing between 6 and 10 co-authors. The institutional profile of these co-authors is diverse, since the collaborations were of the Intra Institution level (co-authorship with researchers from UFRGS), the Intra Nation level (co-authorship with Brazilian researchers) and the Inter Nation level (co-authorship with foreign researchers). However, the number of documents in collaboration with the Intra Nation level was higher than the others. The correlation between productivity and collaboration was positive and very high and, therefore, professors with greater collaborative ties also performed better in terms of productivity.

Conclusions: Based on the results, it is assumed that collaboration, once stimulated through an institutional policy, can contribute to increase the scientific production of less productive professor, thus contributing to a balanced distribution of published documents among professors.