International scientific collaboration: cooperation between Latin America and Spain,as seen from different databases

Abstract

Three databases were used to analyse documents written in collaboration between Latin America and Spain from 1984 to 1988, and to determine how the choice of databases affects results. A total of 402 documents was regis tered in the Science Citation Index while 149 documents were found in two Spanish databases, ICYT and IME, covering national journals in science and technology, and medicine, respectively. Studies relating to fields of basic research were more likely to be published in the Journals included in SCI while research in applied fields tended to appear in the national Journals covered by the Spamsh databases. Our re sults suggest that authors of collaborative papers prefer to publish in mainstream Journals rather than in Spanish jour nals, even those covered by SCI.