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Biotechnology profile analysis in Colombia

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Abstract

It is widely accepted that biotechnology is a globally significant and growing research field. Because of its biodiversity, Colombia has a comparative advantage to innovate and commercialize biotechnological products and services. The aim of this study is to obtain a research profile and intellectual structure of the country in the biotechnology field by using bibliometric methods. These methods are needed to monitor the capacities and the compliance of national policies in biotechnology. By using records extracted from the ISI WoK database, this study describes the biotechnology publication trend, productivity and collaboration among institutions and countries, preferred journals, and the intellectual structure at the research subject area. Although, a growing trend in biotechnology publication was observed, the productivity is still low when compared to other countries in the region and the world. On the other hand, researchers seem to show a preference for international over domestic collaboration. The results suggest two elements: first, policy has not had the expected outcome in the short term, and second, a lack of internal collaboration could therefore reflect low endogenous capacities. The bibliometric methods used in this study can be applied to a wide range of research fields other than biotechnology.

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Notes

  1. Records per capita are calculated based on the country population and have an order of magnitude of 10−6. The information was consulted the 29th of March (2014) on the website of the World Bank http://datos.bancomundial.org/indicador/SP.POP.TOTL. We thank a reviewer for this suggestion.

  2. Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Ecuador.

  3. In Fig. 2b are observed only the top 30 countries. This avoids the clutter in the figure and improves its understanding.

  4. Universities in Colombia are Higher Education Institutions classified according to their legal nature in public and private institutions. The private universities should be organized as legal entities of public utility, nonprofit, organized as corporations, foundations and institutions of solidarity economy. Public universities have special autonomy in terms of recruitment, special regime to pay their teachers, special handling in budgetary matters, and have special contributions to be maintained by the National Government.

  5. International Center for Tropical Agriculture. Although, the CIAT has its headquarters in Colombia, its impact is wider involving more than 200 scientist working in Latin America and the Caribbean as well as 29 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and 5 in South East Asia.

  6. High Council of Scientific Research. CSIC is the main public research institution in Spain. This institution coordinates, develops, and diffuses the research and technology towards knowledge generation and economic development. One of their main functions is the diffusion and contribution of the Spanish research at the international landscape.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the reviewers of this paper for making many valuable suggestions and thoughtful comments. Besides, we thank Professors Luis E. Becerra and Piedad Arenas for their valuable feedback. We also thank the Universidad Industrial de Santander for its support in the provision of specialized analytic tools (software) needed to obtain the data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Technology and Innovation Management Research–Innotec, Universidad Industrial de Santander, Vicerrectoría Administrativa, Cra. 27 Calle 9, Bucaramanga, Colombia

    H. Martinez & J. Camacho

  2. Knowledge Transfer Office, Vicerrectoría de Investigaciones–Oficina de Transferencia de Conocimiento, Universidad Industrial de Santander (UIS), Cra. 27 Calle 9, Bucaramanga, Colombia

    A. Jaime

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Correspondence to H. Martinez.

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Martinez, H., Jaime, A. & Camacho, J. Biotechnology profile analysis in Colombia. Scientometrics 101, 1789–1804 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1408-2

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