Most studies about knowledge production and research collaboration tend to focus on disciplines that have a measurable economic and innovation impact such as STEM disciplines (Kwiek, 2021) while the social sciences (SS) tend to be less visible in the science landscape. Moreover, knowledge production in the SS is shaped by geopolitical factors so that knowledge produced in the so-called Global South tends to be less visible that knowledge produced in the Global North (Connell, 2007).

In this paper, we examine patterns of research collaboration in the SS in Latin America (LATAM). LATAM has a well-documented tradition of research in the SS (Vessuri et al., 2014) and previous studies indicate that this region has witnessed an increase in publications in certain disciplines in the SS over the last decade (Author and Other, 2019; Koch et al., 2021; Mosbah-Natanson & Gingras, 2014). Moreover, as in other regions of the world, research funding and impact are significatively associated with research outputs. This trend is changing the landscape of academia and increasing the pressure on universities and their academics who are caught in a public or perish dilemma.

Specifically, this study examines joint articles published in the SS over a 17-year period (2002-2018). Thus, this paper addresses three research questions: (i) How did article collaboration patterns—as reflected in joint papers—in the SS change over the 2002-2018 period in LATAM? (ii) How do these patterns differ across Latin American countries? (iii) with which European countries Latin American countries collaborate the most in the SS?

Theoretical Framework

A northern advantage to the Global North in the production of knowledge prevails as a result of colonial and postcolonial relations between regions and countries (de Sousa Santos, 2015; Connell, 2007), which, in turn, puts knowledge produced in the global South at disadvantage. As a result of these geopolitical imbalances, knowledge produced in the global North tends to be accorded primacy in both value and visibility (measured in reads and citations) over that produced in the global South (Connell, 2007; de Sousa Santos, 2015).

A key issue regarding patterns of publication in the SS is language. Academic papers tend to be published in Portuguese or Spanish (Chavarro et al., 2017; Dyachenko, 2014). As a result, the SS tend to have lower coverage in international databases in English (Siversten, 2016) and higher coverage in local non-English journals (Sīle et al., 2018). Consequently, scientific production in the SS in non-English speaking countries might be underrepresented in world databases, compared with that of their counterparts in Anglo-Saxon countries, where the natural tendency is to write in English (Larivière & Macaluso, 2011). The cross-national visibility of work in those human-oriented disciplines in the Global South is thus reduced, so accentuating the disciplinary imbalances (in reach and citations). 

Another pattern of publication in the SS has to do with authorship and domestic and international collaboration. Several studies indicate that scholars in the SS tend to publish single-authored papers or list fewer co-authors (Bonaccorsi et al., 2017; Dyachenko, 2014; Nederhof, 2006). Also, and given that the SS are more context-focused, it might be expected for collaboration to be more nationally bounded (i.e. publications authored by researchers affiliated to institutions within a single country). In LATAM, this trend might be due in part to the fact that much of the research in the SS is financed by national agencies that incentivise domestic research (above international collaborative studies) and whose outcomes, in turn, tend to be published in local journals, books and reports, and in local languages (Cordis, 2011).

Data on published articles were drawn from two main indexing databases: Web of Science Core Collection (hereinafter, WoScc) and the Scientific Electronic Library Online (hereinafter, SciELO). The sample included articles that met the following criteria: (a) at least one of the article’s authors was affiliated to an institution in LATAM; and (b) the article was published in a journal classified in the SS between 2002 and 2018. The analytical sample included a total of 101,199 papers (35,854 WoScc articles plus 65,345 SciELO articles). Data cleaning, analysis and visualisation were carried out using the R package bibliometrix (Aria & Cucurullo, 2017) and tidyverse (Wickham et al., 2019). To understand how article production has grown, we focused on two indicators: (a) the magnitude of production; and (b) the rate of change in the number of articles. Patterns of collaboration were classified as follow: 1) Single-authored articles: articles authored by a single author (that is, no collaboration involved), 2) Single-country collaboration: articles authored by two or more researchers affiliated to institutions within the same Latin American country, 3) Collaboration within LATAM: articles authored by two or more researchers affiliated to institutions in two or more Latin American countries and there being no author affiliated to a non-Latin American institution, 4) Collaboration outside LATAM: articles co-authored by one or more researchers affiliated to Latin American institutions and by at least one author from a non-Latin American institution. At the Conference, outcomes will be presented in graphs.

Our findings revealed: (i) a rapid growth in the production of articles in WoS and SciELO; (ii) large differences in article production across LATAM countries; (iii) an initial predominance of single-authored articles but which has been declining in favour of single-country collaborations and collaboration with researchers outside LATAM; and (iv) an important variation in the magnitudes of joint articles with researchers outside LATAM, collaboration that tends to be with scholars from countries in the global North. First, scholars in the SS have been increasingly turning to journal publishing as a means of disseminating their research. Second, Brazil led the gross number of published articles in the region. This is not surprising given the country’s size, research capacity and investment in research and development, which is the highest in LATAM (OECD, 2014). However, when adjusted by numbers of researchers and of inhabitants, Colombia and Chile led, respectively. This finding is striking considering the low investment in research and development as a percentage of their GDP of these two latter countries (0.36 and 0.23, respectively) compared with Brazil (1.16) ((https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS?end=2019&start=2012). Third, most articles in the SS were single- authored papers. However, there is a steady increase in collaboration between authors within a single country, followed by collaboration with researchers affiliated to institutions outside LATAM, in journals indexed in WoScc. The countries with which researchers in LATAM collaborate the most are the USA (although decreasing over time), Spain (increasing over time), UK, France, Canada and Germany, all of them part of the global North. It is striking - given the geographic proximity among Latin American countries, a shared language in the case of Spanish, and, arguably, similar social challenges - is that, overall, there is less collaboration among scholars among LATAM countries than with countries in the global North.

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