Dissertation Information for Heloisa Tardin ChristovaoNAME:
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SCHOOL: ADVISORS: COMMITTEE MEMBERS: MPACT Status: Fully Complete Title: THE AGING OF THE LITERATURE OF BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES IN DEVELOPED AND UNDERDEVELOPED COUNTRIES Abstract: It is accepted that the functions of the communication system of science, as well as the amount of time required for both the evaluative and integrative processes to be taken into effect, are the same in different regions of the world, developed and underdeveloped. However, differences may exist among countries. Hence the goal of the present investigation was to verify if there is a difference in the patterns and in the time it takes for developed and underdeveloped countries to evaluate the scientific literature, and if a difference occurs, to ascertain why. In doing so, a method was developed to display the patterns of communication among regions, and the changes over time in the use they make of scientific literatures. Its importance rests on its ability to ascertain the use of scientific literatures at a less subjective level, as that disclosed by means of the analysis of references. The method implies the identification of documents published by developed and underdeveloped countries, and the analysis of the references contained in them. Samples were drawn for each of three different topics of the Biomedical Sciences - Schistosomiasis, Arrhythmia and DNA. The documents were sampled from the Cumulated Index Medicus, 1979. Both the documents and their references were analysed according to different aspects such as place of publication, language, level of collaboration, subheadings, and year of publication. The main results of the study are: (1) developed and underdeveloped countries age the literature of "international" areas of science in a similar pattern; (2) underdeveloped countries age the literature reflecting "local" problems slower than developed countries age the same literature; (3) the communication patterns among regions, as measured at the publication level, follow a center-periphery model, and (4) underdeveloped nations cite the literature of developed countries more than their own. The main conclusions are: (1) underdeveloped nations should emphasize research analysing their own national scientific communication systems in parallel to the development of science policy studies. The fact that underdeveloped countries are scientifically peripheral to the central nations, and present a dual pattern in the aging of scientific literatures, must introduce some peculiar problems in the patterns of local informal and formal communication; (2) research should be done in order to elucidate the functions of journals published by underdeveloped countries, and thus ascertain in which manner they participate in both the evaluative and integrative processes in science. |
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