Unseen science: Representation of BRICs in global science

A survey of scientific periodical publications (or venues) from BRIC country practitioners counted more than 15,000 national publications. Data collected from and about Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC countries) show that 495 publications, or about 3%, are listed in the Science Citation Index Expanded^© (SCIE^©) in 2010. Contrary to our expectation of under-representation overall and coverage limitation of SCIE, the average percentage of SCIE-listed publications for the BRICs is about the same as that for advanced countries. China has the lowest representation of national publications in SCIE at 2% of all publications; Russia has the highest at about 8%. India has about 6% of publications in SCIE; Brazil has about 4%. In other words, SCIE includes about the same percentage of high quality science from these four countries as for North America and Europe, meaning that these countries are not under-represented in SCIE. Moreover, the number of national publications available as outlets suggests that national scientists in these countries have good access to publication venues. Some of the BRIC national publications are difficult to “see” at the global level because of language barriers, diverse publication formats, and lack of digitization. Other national differences represent historical traditions surrounding publication.