A characterization of the scientific impact of Brazilian institutions

In this paper we studied the research activity of Brazilian Institutions for all sciences and also their performance in the area of physics between 1945 and December 2008. All the data come from the Web of Science database for this period. The analysis of the experimental data shows that, within a nonextensive thermostatistical formalism, the Tsallis \emph{q}-exponential distribution $N(c)$ can constitute a new characterization of the research impact for Brazilian Institutions. The data examined in the present survey can be fitted successfully by applying a universal curve namely, $N(c) \propto 1/[1+(q-1) c/T]^{\frac{1}{q-1}}$ with $q\simeq 4/3$ for {\it all} the available citations $c$, $T$ being an “effective temperature”. The present analysis ultimately suggests that via the “effective temperature” $T$, we can provide a new performance metric for the impact level of the research activity in Brazil, taking into account the number of the publications and their citations. This new performance metric takes into account the “quantity” (number of publications) and the “quality” (number of citations) for different Brazilian Institutions. In addition we analyzed the research performance of Brazil to show how the scientific research activity changes with time, for instance between 1945 to 1985, then during the period 1986-1990, 1991-1995, and so on until the present. Finally, this work intends to show a new methodology that can be used to analyze and compare institutions within a given country.

💡 Research Summary

The paper presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of Brazilian research institutions covering the period from 1945 to December 2008, using data extracted exclusively from the Web of Science (WoS). The authors focus on two scopes: the entire spectrum of scientific output across all disciplines and a more detailed examination of the physics sub‑field. Their central methodological innovation is the application of a non‑extensive statistical framework—specifically the Tsallis q‑exponential distribution—to model the relationship between the number of citations (c) received by a paper and the cumulative number of papers (N(c)) that have at least that many citations.

The functional form they adopt is

\