Productivity and Popularity Indicators of Faculty Members at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in the Field of Internal Medicine

Abstract

This study aims to analyze both productivity and scientific productivity within the domain of Clinical Medicine, in the disciplinary field of Medicine among faculty members holding research productivity fellowships affiliated with the Graduate Program in Clinical Medicine (PPGCM) at the School of Medicine of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). This program has received the highest rating in the field of Medicine I from the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES). The investigation focuses on the phenomena that govern scientific production and citation practices for communicative purposes, using indicators of productivity, popularity, scientific collaboration, and internationalization of knowledge. The evaluation of science is considered essential and significant by members of the scientific community, research funding agencies, and both national and international databases. Such evaluation supports the development of governmental and institutional policies, as well as the construction of academic rankings and the classification of scientists, journals, and institutions. The epistemological and methodological framework is grounded in theories, concepts, and methods from the fields of Bibliometrics and Scientometrics within Information Science. The study particularly draws upon Marshakova’s (1981) Scientific Productivity and Popularity Model, citation analysis, the scientific collaboration networks proposed by Bordon and Gómez (2000), and the approach to the internationalization of knowledge formulated by Santin, Vanz, and Stumpf (2016). This scientometric research adopts a quantitative, descriptive, and exploratory approach, utilizing citation records from the Web of Science (WoS) database as the primary source of data. The study population comprises faculty members of the PPGCM/UFRJ who have received research productivity fellowships at various levels granted by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). Initially, forty-nine academic curricula of PPGCM/UFRJ faculty were analyzed on the CNPq Lattes Platform to identify fellowship holders and map scientific output for the five-year period from 2018 to 2022, considering only articles published in peer-reviewed journals. Subsequently, the five most productive fellowship holders were selected, and for each, their two most cited articles in WoS were retrieved, totaling ten articles that had received 1,914 citations. These citations constitute the research sample. The analysis of scientific production by PPGCM/UFRJ faculty (2018–2022) identified a total of 1,742 articles, of which 70.4% were authored by productivity fellows. The data indicate that the five most productive faculty members exhibited levels of scientific output comparable to those of the 24 non-fellow faculty members during the same period. Furthermore, the results reveal a predominance of the scientific journal article format (88.26%) and the English language (98.39%) among citing documents. The 13,775 citing authors are affiliated with 3,188 institutions, 141 of which are based in Brazil. Bibliographic metadata were processed using the VOSviewer software for the modeling of national and international institutional co-authorship collaboration networks. Network graphs were generated based on the total number of analyzed citations, as well as individualized collaboration networks for the most productive faculty members. The institutional collaboration network maps indicate the proximity of UFRJ to international institutions and its grouping within clusters of higher scientific output. The data demonstrate the internationalization of science, with a predominance of international affiliations, led by institutions such as McGill University and Harvard University, which appeared in 91 and 83 documents, respectively. National collaboration was centered at UFRJ, appearing in 90 documents, and included inter-institutional partnerships with the University of São Paulo and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. Citation analysis of the most productive fellowship holders, focused on individual output, revealed patterns of international collaboration involving UFRJ, particularly with North American and European Union health institutions and organizations.