For Mexican Science, Steady Progress

摘要

Having last touched on Latin America in a survey of emergent juggernaut Brazil two years ago (July/August 2009), Science Watch now turns its attention to the region's second-largest producer of scientific papers: Mexico. The graph above tracks Mexico's portion of world science-that is, its percent share of papers indexed by Thomson Reuters, representing all fields-for each year between 1996 and 2010. Also shown are corresponding figures for a selection of regional comparator nations: Argentina, Chile, and Venezuela. From its share of just under 0.50% in 1996, Mexico has expanded its presence to upwards of 0.80% in 2010. In absolute numbers, Mexico increased its total output from 3,585 Thomson Reuters-indexed papers to nearly 9,200 in 2010. When Science Watch surveyed Latin American nations a decade ago (September/October 2001), Mexico and Argentina were shown to be comparatively close in world share between 1981 and 2000. As the current graph illustrates, Mexico's upswing continued into the new millennium, while Argentina's share mostly dropped off after a peak in 2002. (It must also be acknowledged that, beginning four years ago, Thomson Reuters substantially expanded its coverage of Latin America-based journals, indexing a greater number of papers from Mexico and the other nations shown here, and accounting for at least part of the uptick discernible on the respective lines for die period 2007 to 2008.)