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Research Landscape in Brazil: Challenges and Opportunities ABSTRACT: Decades of investments in infrastructure for research and training of graduate students in Brazil have placed the country in a relatively prominent position in the production of papers, though the visibility and impact of Brazilian papers are still modest. In this viewpoint paper, a short description of the evolution of Brazilian science is presented, in addition to a critical analysis of its strengths and limitations, with a view of the required actions for improving quality and impact. Special emphasis is given to physical chemistry and its relationships to other areas of chemical sciences in the country.
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evaluation and accreditation system has been in place for almost 40 years now, which is performed by the national agency CAPES linked to the Ministry of Education. Obviously, these efforts had to be accompanied by continuous funding, and this was done by national agencies, including the scientific council CNPq for mainly basic and applied research, CAPES for training of graduate students and postdocs, Finep for applied research, technology, and innovation, in addition to agencies financed by individual states. Of particular relevance in this context has been FAPESP, the funding agency of the State of São Paulo. With a budget of 1% of all the revenues from the State, FAPESP has been a driving force in supporting research and innovation and for the training of scientists. As a result, around 50% of the whole scientific output of Brazil comes from the State of São Paulo. Indeed, the number of papers published by scientists from São Paulo is larger than that of all the Latin American countries put together (except Brazil).1 Drawbacks and Major Challenges. The growth of Brazilian science was not accompanied by a corresponding growth in visibility and impact. It is true that assessing impact is not an easy task, and the use of quantitative measures may be misleading since impact is rather subjective. In any case, taking the impact of papers published as denoted by citations in the literature, Brazil does not perform well. Figure 3 shows that the impact of Brazilian papers is below the world average, being considerably lower than the leading countries (such as USA and United Kingdom) and below other Latin American countries.1 Another issue related to the research landscape in Brazil has been the difficulty in transforming results from scientific work into innovation and technology. This is reflected in a very small number of patent applications, which is substantially lower than that of China and South Korea, in a comparison with BRICK countries in Figure 4A. The consequence of this lack of innovation has been a large trade deficit in technological products, as indicated in Figure 4B. The Hurdles. Many are the hurdles for Brazil to overcome these deficiencies. Starting with the lack of innovation, I believe the two key problems are (i) inadequate economic environment and legislation, which hamper investments in innovation and entrepreneurship. The country has endured a long period of high interest rates, with a complex taxation system and stringent labor laws which impair the flourishing of new companies. (ii) The country has a solid technological basis only in a few areas. Indeed, Brazil is highly competitive in agribusiness, deep sea oil drilling, and midsize airplanes, and
razil was a late starter in the development of science and technology. Its first higher education institutions were created in the XIX century, but full-fledged universities with research programs only became a reality a little over 80 years ago. Funding agencies were established in the second half of the XX century, and a system of graduate programs was in place only in the 1970s. The growth of scientific activity in the country has been tremendous in the past few decades though, as can be noticed by the increase in its scientific output in Figure 1, measured in terms of papers published in journals indexed by the Web of Science.1 From ca. 2000 papers in 1981, Brazil published over 40 500 papers in 2014. Taking the period from 2009 to 2013, Brazil ranked 13th in the number of published papers, with 2.74% of the output from the whole world.1 The 10 most prolific fields in Brazilian science are, in descending order: Agricultural Sciences, Plant and Animal Science, Pharmacology and Toxicology, Microbiology, Environment/Ecology, Social Sciences, Clinical Medicine, Biology and Biochemistry, and Neurosciences and Immunology, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters for the period between 2007 and 2011.2 This reflects three major factors in the Brazilian system: (i) the excellence required in research and innovation for agribusiness, an area where Brazil is one of the world leaders; (ii) the surge in interest in health and life sciences, which is shared by many nations, not only because of their importance for the quality of life and longevity of the population but also due to the advances in methodologies for diagnosis and therapymost of which depend on basic sciences such as chemistry and physics; (iii) the broadness of interests in a country that has put emphasis on fundamental research, which may explain why Social Sciences appear as one of the most prolific fields, in contrast to the statistics for all the other BRICK countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Korea).2 It is to be noted that the scientific output from Brazil is lower than that of the other BRICK countries, especially China, which also applies to physical chemistry.3 One of the main reasons for such large growth was the establishment of a national program of graduate studies. In fact, the increase in the number of master and PhD titles awarded in the country shown in Figure 2 is comparable to that of the scientific output in Figure 1. The updated figure of PhD titles awarded in 2015 is 16 700 titles.4 The training of so many graduate students was possible with an aggressive initiative to create graduate programs in all areas of science and technology, in all geographic regions of the country. The number of PhD programs increased from ca. 200 in the 1970s to around 2000 programs in 2015.4 Important in this regard is that an © 2016 American Chemical Society
Published: March 17, 2016 5273
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.6b01958 J. Phys. Chem. C 2016, 120, 5273−5276
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The Journal of Physical Chemistry C
Figure 1. Time evolution of the number of papers published by Brazilian scientists. Source: ref 1.
has not been taken; as a result, innovating in the country may be more expensive than in economically more developed countries since one has to start from scratch in many cases. In such an environment the trained researchers tend to seek jobs in universities and research institutes rather than going to industry, which explains why the majority of PhDs in Brazil work in universities. As for the impact, I first emphasize that publishing highimpact work requires very demanding conditions, including choice of appealing scientific/technological problems, skillfully trained scientists, adequate infrastructure, and ability to communicate the results and new concepts. I list three possible causes for the low impact of Brazilian research: (i) variability in infrastructure and quality of research institutions in the country; (ii) effects from problems in basic education, and (iii) the language barrier. While some of the Brazilian institutions have infrastructure and academic environment similar to top research institutions in the world, the need to take higher education and research to the whole of a country with continental dimensions has led to underprivileged universities that lack the infrastructure and critical mass for generating high-level research. Consistent with this hypothesis is the finding that the average impact of papers produced in the State of São Paulo, where universities have better infrastructure, is higher than the countrýs average (see Figure 3). Another consequence has been the highly unequal distribution of research output, with a single state (São Paulo) being responsible for ca. 50% of the papers published internationally, as already mentioned. Scientists working in the country are mostly Brazilians, as the undergraduate and graduate programs have been unable to
Figure 2. Number of PhD and Master titles awarded by Brazilian universities from 1998 up to 2014. Source: ref 4.
in each case one may identify the research and development initiatives and institutions that led to such leadership. In agribusiness, the government created Embrapa, a state company with dozens of units across the country which develop research in all related areas, in addition to a few research institutes. The aeronautics industry originated from a national program that created the company to manufacture airplanes, an engineering school, and a research center in the city of São José dos Campos, State of São Paulo. Technology for deep soil drilling was developed by Petrobras (and partners), which has invested heavily in research and development for decades. For almost any other high tech area, this step of building a technology basis
Figure 3. Relative impact to the world average of papers produced in 9 countries. Also included is the relative impact of papers from authors in the State of São Paulo, separately. Source: ref 1. 5274
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.6b01958 J. Phys. Chem. C 2016, 120, 5273−5276
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The Journal of Physical Chemistry C
Figure 4. (A) Time evolution for the number of invention patent applications of the BRICK countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Korea). Source: ref 2. (B) Brazilian trade deficit in some high-tech areas (pharmaceutical, information technology (IT), health, chemical and equipment, and machines) for the period between 2002 and 2010. The updated deficit for 2013 in these high-tech areas is US$ 80 billion. Source: Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of Brazil.
Figure 5. Temporal evolution in the number of articles in physical chemistry (retrieved from the Web of Science as specified in the text) by Brazilian authors. The total count of papers (5066) was obtained for the whole period, but data were shown for 1972 onward.
under-represented the area, as papers associated with physical chemistry have been published in other journals, either those of general chemistry or general science, or in journals covering physical chemistry (e.g., Langmuir) which do not include the names used in the search. Indeed, a search on “colloid*” retrieves 1620 articles, whereas only 99 were counted in the data of Figure 5. Therefore, one might assume that a realistic overall number of papers in physical chemistry should be a few thousand more, making a substantial contribution, since the number of papers published in chemistry by Brazilian authors was under 14 000 from 1980 to 2015.1In subsidiary surveys, I checked that the growth rate remains practically unaltered if additional journals are included in the search, and therefore the trend noted in Figure 5 may be taken as representative of the whole of physical chemistry in Brazil. With regard to the size of communities and scientific production, one may highlight the areas of computational modeling, colloids and physical chemistry of surfaces, and electrochemistry as main areas with active researchers in many Brazilian institutions. Also worth noting is the merge of physical chemistry areas with nanoscience and nanotechnology. From the 5066 papers in the data of Figure 5, 899 papers were retrieved with a search of nano*, which is to be compared with an overall number of more than 30 000 of nano* papers in all areas. Nanotechnology is therefore pervasive in Brazilian scientific production, including in association with physical chemistry. Research in physical chemistry to be highlighted for having reached high impact (in terms of citations in the Web of Science) includes topics such as spectroscopy and microscopy of carbon-based materials, especially graphene and carbon nanotubes, electrocatalysis and fuel cells, colloids and interfaces,
attract international students in large numbers. Competition for a place in academic institutions and/or research-related jobs is therefore limited, which is impacted by the low quality (in average) of basic education in the country. Particularly relevant in this context is the language barrier. As a monolingual country (in spite of the more than 150 indigenous languages still spoken in Brazil), the whole education cycle, up to graduate level, is performed in Portuguese. The level of proficiency in Englishthe lingua f ranca for science and technologyis quite low, with deleterious effects. The lack of proficiency in English reduces efficiency and impairs publication in prestigious journals. Most important of all is that the language barrier is often confounded (and potentialized) with difficulties in scientific writing. Since scientific writing is inextricably linked to the scientific method, deficiencies associated with poor knowledge of English and of the scientific discourse surely reduce the efficiency and quality of the research performed. Physical Chemistry in Brazil. Physical chemistry is perhaps one of the most disseminated areas of chemistry in Brazil, probably owing to the presence of leading scientists in the field during the creation and consolidation of graduate programs in the country. As it applied to other sciences, the growth in the number of papers in physical chemistry has been significant, which is exemplified in Figure 5 where approximately half of the papers were published in the last ten years. The data in the figure were obtained by retrieving articles in the Web of Science (on 16th February, 2016) published by authors with Brazilian addresses in the journals containing “physical chemistry”, “chemical physics”, and “electrochem” in their names. This choice was just for the sake of consistency, and “electrochem” was added because it is a prolific, important area in Brazil (see below). The total of 5066 papers obviously 5275
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.6b01958 J. Phys. Chem. C 2016, 120, 5273−5276
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The Journal of Physical Chemistry C ionic liquids, fuel cells, solar and photoelectrochemical cells, theoretical modeling, including computational modeling in recent years, semiconducting polymers, and biosensors. This list of topics does point to a very multidisciplinary nature in the research in physical chemistry in Brazil, involving chemists from various areas in addition to physicists, engineers, and biologists. Such diversity, in both theoretical and experimental research, has been made possible with the building of infrastructure in Brazilian universities in the last few decades, as already mentioned in the discussion of general science. In comparison with the leading countries in physical chemistry, one may say that physical chemistry laboratories in Brazil are almost as well equipped, but the country is less privileged with regard to largescale facilities (such as synchrotron sources, high-resolution electron microscopies, nanofabs, etc.). The Way Forward. The challenges in science and technology that Brazil has to face can be summarized in three items: (i) keep the large growth rates of recent times, (ii) increase impact, and (iii) transform knowledge into innovation and technology. The latter challenge is certainly the most difficult one since it requires concerted efforts of the government in establishing policies and fomenting research and development, of academia, and of the industry. I believe a specific national program should be implemented for innovation, particularly to train human resources that could both build the bridges between academia and industry and develop innovation in industry. This would shift the balance of PhDs that primarily work in universities today. Keeping the large growth rates seems a more straightforward task, provided that investments in higher education and research are kept at the same levels of the first decade of this century. Improving quality and increasing impact is a more ambitious goal, as the limitations in the Brazilian system mentioned above have to be addressed. Public policies in the field should prioritize research and development to solve grand challenges, which are normally multidisciplinary and prone to lead to higher-impact results. This view is shared by many Brazilian scientists (see, e.g., ref 5) and could be done by fostering and extending networks of excellence, large-scale facilities (e.g., synchrotron radiation laboratories), and international collaboration. Obviously, the heart of any scientific system is in the people involved. In addition to trying to attract young talents from other parts of the world, especially from Latin America for the proximity of neighboring countries, I advocate that emphasis should be put into improving the quality of the training of undergraduate and graduate students. While such an improvement can only be substantial after considerable investment in education, there are areas in which strong action now can yield results in the short term. I refer to overcoming the language barrier, by investing in a program to improve the communication skills of students and young scientists in the country. There is now ample evidence in the literature that scientific writing in English can be taught using concepts of corpus linguistics, which is an area where language is studied as it is expressed in a corpus (a large, structured set of texts, written or spoken).6 This approach is based on training students to recognize and adapt textual patterns for their own needs. It serves not only to improve language skills in English but also to teach issues related to the scientific discourse (and method) to the students. Just by way of illustration, it has been shown that the language produced by students and novice writers is different from that of experts, regardless of whether these novices are English speakers or not.6
Last but not least, Brazilian scientists should extend and intensify their international collaboration. In the more specific case of physical chemistry, ample opportunities exist in developing joint research programs and in organizing joint events (in Brazil or elsewhere). Close ties could be developed involving chemists and other scientists studying matter, such as physicists, materials scientists and engineers, biologists, computer scientists, and a whole host of other professionals that develop solutions and processes based on chemical sciences. A clear example of the value of going beyond chemistry territories is represented by the success of nanoscience and nanotechnology in reshaping the way new technologies are generated, with chemistry as a central science.
Osvaldo N. Oliveira, Jr.*
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São Carlos Institute of Physics, University of São Paulo (USP), CP 369, 13560-970 São Carlos, SP Brazil
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Notes
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to Prof. Carlos Henrique Brito Cruz, scientific director of FAPESP, Profs. Glaucius Oliva and Sylvio Canuto, from the University of São Paulo, and Prof. Carlos Graeff, from São Paulo State University (Unesp), for providing me with the data about Brazilian science and education. I also thank many colleagues from the nBioNet network for their input on the relevance of physical chemistry in Brazil. Opinions regarding the research landscape, errors, and omissions remain the author’s responsibility.
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REFERENCES
(1) Brito Cruz, C. H. A busca pela excelência nas universidades no Brasil. Presented at The Symposium on Excellence in Higher Education; orgs. Brazilian Academy of Sciences and São Paulo Research Foundation, FAPESP, Jan. 23−24, 2014 (São Paulo); available at http://www.fapesp.br/eventos/2014/01/Excellence/excellence-inhigher-ed-chbc20140122.pdf. The data were updated by C.H. Brito Cruz to be used in this article. (2) Adams, J.; Pendlebury, D.; Stembridge, B. Building BRICKS, Exploring the global research and innovation impact of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Korea; Thomson Reuters, February, 2013 (available at http://sciencewatch.com/sites/sw/files/sw-article/ media/grr-brick.pdf). (3) Kamat, P. V.; Schatz, G. C. Building Physical Chemistry with BRICKs. J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2014, 5, 4000−4001. (4) Geocapes - CAPES, Ministry of Education of Brazil (http:// geocapes.capes.gov.br). (5) Jorio, A.; Sá Barreto, F. C.; de Sampaio, J. F.; Chacham, H. Brazilian science towards a phase transition. Nat. Mater. 2010, 9, 528− 531. (6) Schuster, E.; Levkowitz, H.; Oliveira, O. N., Jr. Writing Scientific Papers in English Successfully: Your Complete Roadmap (Eds.); Hyprtek.com: Andover, Massachusetts (USA), 2014.
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