Jesús Pascual Mena-Chalco

BraX-Ray: An X-Ray of the Brazilian Computer Science Graduate Programs

Research productivity assessment is increasingly relevant for allocation of research funds. On one hand, this assessment is challenging because it involves both qualitative and quantitative analysis of several characteristics, most of them subjective in nature. On the other hand, current tools and academic social networks make bibliometric data web-available to everyone for free. Those tools, especially when combined with other data, are able to create a rich environment from which information on research productivity can be extracted. In this context, our work aims at characterizing the Brazilian Computer Science graduate programs and the relationship among themselves. We (i) present views of the programs from different perspectives, (ii) rank the programs according to each perspective and a combination of them, (iii) show correlation between assessment metrics, (iv) discuss how programs relate to another, and (v) infer aspects that boost programs research productivity. The results indicate that programs with a higher insertion in the coauthorship network topology also possess a higher research productivity between 2004 and 2009.

Comunicação científica no Brasil (1998-2012): indexação, crescimento, fluxo e dispersão

A producao cientifica brasileira vem demonstrando ascensao no cenario mundial, o que pode decorrer da internacionalizacao da ciencia nacional e/ou das revistas nacionais. Nesse contexto, este estudo reuniu a producao cientifica brasileira das bases Web of Science e Scientific Electronic Library Online entre 1998 e 2012, com o fim de analisar como a internacionalizacao tem influenciado a performance do pais. Com base em Zonas de Bradford da producao das diversas areas, buscou avaliar o aumento do numero de revistas em cada uma das zonas, assim como a proporcao de artigos publicados em revistas nacionais, ao longo de cinco trienios. Observou-se que o numero de revistas indexadas exclusivamente na Scientific Electronic Library Online cresceu no periodo, com excecao do trienio 4, quando aproximadamente 60% da producao nacional foi publicada em revistas estrangeiras ( Web of Science ). Notou-se que o aumento mais generalizado do numero de revistas das areas deu-se primeiramente na zona 3 (trienio 2004-2006), depois na zona 2 (trienio 2007-2009) e finalmente na zona 1 (trienio 2010-2012). Ja o percentual da producao em revistas nacionais diferenciou tres grupos de areas: ciencias sociais e humanas, onde as zonas 1 e 2 sao exclusivas de revistas nacionais, e a zona 3 vem dando lugar a publicacoes estrangeiras; Fisica, Ciencia do Espaco e Imunologia, cuja producao e exclusivamente internacional; e as demais areas, de ciencias exatas e da terra, saude e biologicas, que vem aumentando o percentual nas zonas 1 e 2, permanecendo a zona 3 direcionada a publicacoes internacionais. Palavras-chave : Avaliacao de pesquisa. Brasil. Producao cientifica. Revistas cientificas nacionais. Zonas de Bradford.

Analysis of an advisor-advisee relationship: an exploratory study of the area of exact and Earth sciences in Brazil.

Scientific collaboration has been studied by researchers for decades. Several approaches have been adopted to address the question of how collaboration has evolved in terms of publication output, numbers of coauthors, and multidisciplinary trends. One particular type of collaboration that has received very little attention concerns advisor and advisee relationships. In this paper, we examine this relationship for the researchers who are involved in the area of Exact and Earth Sciences in Brazil and its eight subareas. These pairs are registered in the Lattes Platform that manages the individual curricula vitae of Brazilian researchers. The individual features of these academic researchers and their coauthoring relationships were investigated. We have found evidence that there exists positive correlation between time of advisor–advisee relationship with the advisee’s productivity. Additionally, there has been a gradual decline in advisor–advisee coauthoring over a number of years as measured by the Kulczynski index, which could be interpreted as decline of the dependence.

Mobile device accessibility for the visually impaired: problems mapping and recommendations

Mobile devices can be an important ally that improves the quality of life of visually impaired people by permitting greater independence in the execution of certain tasks and facilitating social inclusion. This work presents a systematic review that maps out the accessibility issues that visually impaired people experience when they interact with mobile devices. We identified 68 accessibility problems that were mapped into seven problem groups. This mapping was used to propose 28 recommendations to improve the accessibility of mobile devices. This analysis identified the persistence of certain accessibility problems such as the difficulty of typing on keyboards but also finds the emergence of new challenge such as the failure to recognize gesture-based interactions that demand more extensive training for users. This work is important because it provides an overview of accessibility problems that people with visual disabilities experience with mobile devices and proposes a number of accessibility recommendations to guide future studies. The main contribution of this paper is the mapping of accessibility problems into categories and the development of recommendations for identified problems.

A ciência nas regiões brasileiras: evolução da produção e das redes de colaboração científica

A recente evolucao da ciencia brasileira e caracterizada pelo crescimento acelerado da producao cientifica e pela intensificacao da colaboracao entre seus pesquisadores. Este trabalho tem por objetivo apresentar elementos sobre o papel da geografia na evolucao da producao e colaboracao cientifica no Brasil entre 1992 e 2009, por meio da identificacao de padroes espaciais e da importância relativa das regioes em termos de producao, especializacao cientifica e grau de interacao colaborativa com outras regioes. Para este estudo, foram desenvolvidas (i) uma base de dados unica, composta por mais de um milhao de pesquisadores e sete milhoes de publicacoes cientificas registradas na Plataforma Lattes, e (ii) diferentes redes de colaboracoes (coautoria) cientificas entre regioes e estados brasileiros. Embora os principais resultados apontem para a heterogeneidade espacial da producao e colaboracao cientifica, existem fortes evidencias de um processo de desconcentracao espacial ao longo do tempo associado a expansao das redes de colaboracao e ao aumento da participacao de autores das regioes cientificamente menos tradicionais, tais como Sul e Nordeste. Observam-se diferencas acentuadas entre as distribuicoes regionais da producao e as configuracoes espaciais das redes de cada area do conhecimento. Neste trabalho ressalta-se a importância das redes de colaboracao cientifica no tocante a formulacao de politicas de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Inovacao no Brasil no sentido de promover o incremento de qualidade e a desconcentracao regional da atividade cientifica e, consequentemente, o desenvolvimento das regioes menos favorecidas.Palavras-chave: Analise espacial. Colaboracao cientifica. Padroes espaciais. Producao cientifica. Tecnicas bibliometricas.

The dynamics of Brazilian protozoology over the past century

Brazilian scientists have been contributing to the protozoology field for more than 100 years with important discoveries of new species such asTrypanosoma cruzi and Leishmania spp. In this work, we used a Brazilian thesis database (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) covering the period from 1987-2011 to identify researchers who contributed substantially to protozoology. We selected 248 advisors by filtering to obtain researchers who supervised at least 10 theses. Based on a computational analysis of the thesis databases, we found students who were supervised by these scientists. A computational procedure was developed to determine the advisors’ scientific ancestors using the Lattes Platform. These analyses provided a list of 1,997 researchers who were inspected through Lattes CV examination and allowed the identification of the pioneers of Brazilian protozoology. Moreover, we investigated the areas in which researchers who earned PhDs in protozoology are now working. We found that 68.4% of them are still in protozoology, while 16.7% have migrated to other fields. We observed that support for protozoology by national or international agencies is clearly correlated with the increase of scientists in the field. Finally, we described the academic genealogy of Brazilian protozoology by formalising the “forest” of Brazilian scientists involved in the study of protozoa and their vectors over the past century.

ANÁLISE COMPARATIVA DA PRODUTIVIDADE DOS PARES ORIENTADOR-ORIENTADO EM CIÊNCIA DA COMPUTAÇÃO

The increasing involvement of graduate students in scientific communication has been the subject of studies in many countries that have been discussing the role of doctoral studies in the research career. In this article we are interested on the study of the academic relationship between the advisor and the advisee for a group of PhD pairs in the Computer Science area, with curricula registered in the Lattes Platform. We analyze the main characteristics of the group and their coauthor relationships. In terms of co-authorship: (i) we observe that the duration that is established between advisor and advisee can extrapolate the formal period of supervision, and (ii) we show that the duration of the collaboration is correlated with both the number of articles published by the advisee and the ones published by the advisor. In this work we also present the advisee profile for researchers that worked in some of the graduate courses in Computer Science in Brazil in the triennium 2007-2009.

EXTRAÇÃO, CARACTERIZAÇÃO E ANÁLISES DE DADOS DE CURRÍCULOS LATTES

Curricula from the Lattes Platform are a vast source of information for the creation and analysis of researchers social networks. However, due to the large amount of data, the manual filling-in, and the use of semi-structured data, there are several challenges in the use of Lattes as a source of data. This paper presents a database produced from the mining of more than one million Brazilian Lattes curricula. Moreover, it highlights some descriptive characteristics and relationships among these curricula and among the knowledge areas, directions and challenges to the production and analyzes of social networks generated from these data.

Genealogia acadêmica dos doutores atuantes em matemática: um mapeamento macro na ciência brasileira

Neste trabalho apresentamos um mapeamento macro dos doutores atuantes na area de matematica registrados na Plataforma Lattes. Foram computacionalmente prospectados todos os relacionamentos de orientacao/coorientacao academica concluida para a criacao do grafo de genealogia academica, composto de 367.684 vertices e 388.603 arestas. Este mapeamento cientometrico permite: (i) evidenciar a influencia da Matematica na comunidade academica e (ii) identificar os matematicos mais influentes.

Topological metrics in academic genealogy graphs

Abstract Academic genealogy aims to structure and analyze the mentoring relationships between advisor and advisee. The representation of this structure results in academic genealogy graphs. For the analysis and characterization of these graphs, we present a set of metrics and their corresponding mirror metrics that capture the characteristics of its topological structure and represent them as quantitative attributes. The metrics of fecundity, fertility, descendants, cousins, generations, and relationships consider the descendants of the academics represented in the graph. The mirror metric of these topological metrics considers the ascendancy of academics. Individually, the metrics have strong semantic intuition and define characteristics regarding the performance in the mentoring of an academic. Together, the metrics are useful for the identification, characterization, and classification of communities and their members. The genealogical data available through the platforms of the Mathematics Genealogy Project and the Academic Family Tree were used as case studies. Two hundred thirteen thousand and 675,000 academic records were obtained for each project. We analyze the capacity of characterization of the metrics using the structuring of a similarity graph and through the distribution of the nodes in principal components. We observed that the set of metrics is capable of capturing the configuration pattern existing in genealogy graphs independently of its scale.