The role of National journals on the rise in Brazilian Agricultural Science Publications in Web of Science

Essential to economic growth in Brazil, agricultural research is one of the most productive areas of national science. In recent years, an increase in publications from the field on international databases has helped raise the country’s ranking in terms of global scientific output. This is attributable to factors such as the expansion of graduate programs, increased investment in research and the larger collection of Brazilian scientific journals in Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus. The present study analyzes the influence of national journals on the performance of Brazilian output in Agricultural Science represented in WoS from 2002 to 2011, and raises new questions in the debate over the growth of Brazilian scientific output in the last decade. Based on an analysis of 42,106 articles with at least one Brazilian author, papers were mapped in order to identify and characterize the journals used for publication. Results show that the number of articles in the field increased 301.52% during the period studied, due to the expansion of Brazilian journals in WoS and an increase in the number of issues published by these journals. Following inclusion on the database, several journals increased their periodicity. Half of the output assessed was published in national journals, many of which have only recently been included in WoS, are edited in Portuguese and exhibit a low impact factor. The inclusion of new Brazilian titles on the database and changes to the periodicity of journals can be interpreted as signs of improvement in Brazilian agricultural science journals.