Presentation

Verba volant, scripta manent

 

 

Atlas de la Ciencia Mexicana (ACM) is a project that is integrated to the CONACyT social network "Complejidad, Ciencia y Sociedad" (http://www.red-ccs.org). The general aim of ACM is to build statistical databases on the scientific and technological activity developed in Mexico. This data is used to generate indicators on the evolution of each area of knlowledge and to make them available to a large audience.

While the 2009 edition of ACM included only bibliometric data on the period 1980-2006, the present edition covers information on the period 1900-2009. We have used databases sources centered on publications in the mainstream literature, in particular the ISI-Thomson Century of Science initiative complemented with historical bibliographical sources. The statistical data on the number of researchers in each area of knlowledge was constructed from the databases provided by the National Researchers System (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores, SNI) and the information published by some institutions on their web pages.

The original mission of ACM is to provide a reliable source of statistical information on the Mexican scientific activity. The present edition contains global indicators on the number of researchers, as well as on their scientific production and citation. The respective detailed data is included in our electronic site. We hope that through this site it will be possible to communicate with the users of this information and we will appreciate any correction or addition to our data.

 

As far as we know, this is the first time that bibliometric data is provided for the Mexican scientific production and citation for a period as long as 1900-2009. Among the most interesting facts on this data, it stands out that the total mainstream production for the period 1900-1979 was about 8,000 articles, an amount close to the number of articles published every year in recent times by Mexican researchers. It was also surprising to find out that the first mainstream paper published by Mexican researchers dates back to 1939 (A. Baños et al., Reviews of Modern Physics 11 137, 1939). On the other hand, we learned that in Argentina this type of publication came out much earlier, in the decade 1910-1920 (L. Pyenson and M. Singh, Scientometrics 6 279, 1984). The evolving status of the Mexican scientific activity is clearly reflected in the decentralization indicators provided in the 2010 edition of the ACM: while in most of the decades of the XX century the production generated by the institutions located in Mexico City was close to the 90% level, this percentage has decreased to less than 50% in recent years.

 

Areas of knowledge and researchers

 

In order to present the information contained in this edition in a more sistematic way, we have organized it in ten areas of knowledge: biological, physical, chemical and earth sciences, mathematics, engineering, agrosciences, medicine, social sciences and humanities. We have also appealed to various specialities in each area in order to get a closer view on the large scientific production and citation by Mexican researchers in recent years. On the other hand, according to the SNI scheme, we have traied to place each Mexican researcher in only one of the ten areas of knowldge. We hope that this rule will reflect a more precise picture of the Mexican scientific community and its production and citation in the mainstream journals. We have worked out about 18,000 files in our databases for researchers, about 10% more than the members of SNI. All this files have been organized in two catalogs that are available in the ACM site: one for the researchers working in Mexican institutions and another one for the Mexican scientists working abroad, as identified by SNI.

 

Production and citation

 

We have used the databases of the ISI-Thomson Century of Science initiative in order to generate the bibliometric data on the Mexican scientific production during the entire 20th century: Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index and Journal Citation Reports, i.e., what is now known as the Web of Science (WoS). We would like to emphasize that the ACM staff worked out both production and citation data for the entire period 1900-2009, while, for example, the most recent UNESCO science report included only data on the scientific production but not the respective citation indicators (UNESCO Science Report 2010, http://www.unesco.org).

 

Global indicators and areas of knowledge

 

We have included two separated sections for the global indicators, one for the period 1900-1979 and the other one for 1980-2009. We hope that the reader will find useful the evolution of the global indicators according to institutional and geographical distributions of the number of researchers, as well as for their production and citation. A relevant fact coming out of this exercise is a very clear trend towards the decentralization of the scientific activity in our country. There are two sectors that lead this tendency: the public universities in each Mexican state and the research centers associated to CONACyT. This trend can be easly appreciated through the indicators presented in each area of knowledge in the period 1980-2009.

 

Finally, we would like to mention that we have used profusely the institutional abbreviations for most of the Mexican institutions that develop research projects in science and technology. For the readers that are not familiar with this practice, we have included in the ACM electronic site a list of all these abbreviations. We have also organized the global indicators according to several sectors: public universities located in each Mexican state, private universities, national and private laboratories, health and agronomic sectors, CONACyT research centers and federal institutes of technology. However, we have kept in an explicit way the contributions associated to the main institutions on science and technology: UNAM, IPN, UAM, Cinvestav, Colmex and CIMMyT.

 

 

 

Miguel Ángel Pérez Angón

April 2011