Domínios científicos na UFRJ: mapeamento de áreas de conhecimento

Abstract

In Brazil, most of the scientific activity is developed by graduate programs from public universities. The thematic diversity and structural complexity of these institutions make the identification of their profiles and academic standards a hard task. The study of scientific production, using scientific domain analysis, allows knowing how the scientific activities are configured and the various actors involved. Considering the research questions: how are the scientific domains of the UFRJ configured? Do they change over time? Do different domains interact with each other? This thesis aims mapping the scientific domains of one of the largest and most important educational and research institutions of the country, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), identifying the its main fields of expertise as well as the interactions between the different actors of its social body. It is a quantitative study that encompasses information related to the fields of knowledge and authorship from the scientific production of UFRJ’s graduate programs, which uses the network analysis technique based on the co-occurrence measures. The study investigated 44,233 records retrieved from the institutional database, EspaçoSIGMA.UFRJ, articles published in journals from 2001 to 2012. Data were organized and analyzed using Excel and Gephi software. The two sets of analysis, including articles in journals-fields of knowledge and articles in journal-authors, the results show the main thematic fields of UFRJ. Those with the highest number of records are: Medicine, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Zoology, Microbiology, Chemical Engineering, Materials Engineering and Metallurgy. We also find a strong presence of records in the fields of Letters, History, Education, Psychology. Another finding was the level of interaction among fields: around 30% of the published articles are linked to more than one field of knowledge. From this perspective, there was a dynamic interaction, over the period studied, among fields, in which the largest core fields are: Health Sciences, Engineering and Humanities. The analysis of large fields has identified more specific aspects of the interaction between them, allowing the mapping of clusters/communities of fields of knowledge. The analysis by authorship and the interactions established from co-authorship measure showed a downward trend in the number of articles with 1 to 4 authors, whereas tends to increase the number of articles with 5 or more authors. The distribution of authorship by the type of institutional link of the author and the relationship between productivity, collaboration (co-author) and institutional link were also observed. The social network analysis showed that, over the study period, new collaborations among authors of UFRJ were established, forming new clusters/communities of authors. The largest authors’ clusters/communities were detailed and revealed their main specifications. It is, therefore, a singular study, with a comprehensive view of the scientific activity of the entire social body of one of the leading teaching and research institutions in Brazil.