PROFILE OF THE MEXICAN HEAL TH SCIENCES ELITE: A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH PERFORMANCE

摘要

The most prestigious award in Mexico, the "National Prize for Science and Art" has been awarded to 33 health scientists. An exercise was carried out to assess their performance to answer the question: why them? The laureates' profile was based on data retrieved from MEDLINE and Science Citation Index Expanded available on the WWW as well as the ISI's 15-year (1981-1995) cumulative impact factor lists. The laureates published 2,049 papers and were cited 50,834 times. Our results showed the scientific pre-eminence of laureates. We concluded that bibliometric data could complement other indicators of research performance. Bibliometrics could insure the Prize committee against error and the operationalization of the Matthew Effect could be minimized to honor only the most creative researchers.