Assessment of research performance in food science and technology:: Publication behavior of five Iberian-American countries (1992-2003)

This study is a follow-up to a published descriptive outline on the publications of Iberian-American (IA) countries in food science and technology field. The number of articles and citations attained by IA producers (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Portugal and Spain) were examined on 48 journals indexed in Science Citation Index (SCI) database. The growth rate in publication between 1992 and 2003 depicted differences across journals, those with high impact factor were most preferred by IA authors. Different patterns of collaboration and frequency of citations were obtained. Spain and Argentina show the greatest counts of publications and citations but present the lowest percentages of collaboration with outside authors. Instead, three out of ten papers from Portugal, Mexico and Brazil are signed by at least one foreign author. The association of publication productivity to demographic and socio-economic indicators revealed that Spain and Portugal have the highest ratios of publications or citations by human resources followed by Argentina. Argentina showed the highest ratios of publications or citations by expenditure on science and technology activities.