Unseen Science: Representation of the BRICs in Global Science

A survey of scientific periodical venues for BRIC country practitioners counted more than 15,000 national publications. Data collected from and about Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC countries) shows 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 in SCIE, the average number of SCIE-listed publications for the BRICs is about that same as 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. The research suggests that the BRICs are using open access journals, with Brazil having 537 open access journals-among the highest number of any country using open access. India is listed as having had 284 open access journals. China is listed as having 15 (with Taiwan at 14). Russia is noted because it is not listed on the DOAJ country list, because it is creating its own open access content. 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.