Brazilian science is growing again, but continues with lower numbers than in the pre-pandemic period

Measured by the production of indexed academic articles, the country’s scientific activity increased by 4.5% last year (from 70,095 to 73,220 articles), after suffering two consecutive years of reductions of more than 7%. The most recent result has not yet reached the peak seen in 2019, when the country’s researchers published 82,440 papers.

These data appear in the latest report that Elsevier, the world’s largest scientific journal publisher, produced in partnership with the Bori Science Communication Agency to assess the health of academic production in Brazil and compare it to other countries.

The decline observed in 2022 and 2023 was more intense than that of other countries and, on average, longer. In total, the countries managed to return to growth in one year, but Brazilian researchers took two.

While it is true that virtually every scientist in the world has seen their work affected by the pandemic, there is a consensus among researchers that Brazil also experienced a period hostile to science just as it faced the height of Covid-19. The federal administration at the time, with Jair Bolsonaro as president and Marcos Pontes at the Ministry of Science, often found itself in conflict with academia.

— Scientists report that there was a period of cuts in resources, attacks on institutions and the role of scientists, which ended up affecting their work — explains Sabine Righetti, science policy specialist at Bori and co-author of the report. — In this scenario, the researcher also needed fewer resources to conduct research, did less research, and this cascade effect occurred. The decline occurred in more than half of the countries we analyzed, but Brazil saw one of the worst declines.

The verified recovery principle now shows an expected trend, but one that has been slow to manifest, as fluctuations in scientific activity take time to impact productivity. Articles are generally the result of projects that last more than a year and take a reasonable amount of time to appear once new research begins.

The analysis by Elsevier and Bori compared Brazil to 53 other countries that also have a strong academic community. Those who produced at least 10,000 scientific articles in 2024 were included.

This year, all countries studied in the report have seen increasing scientific activity, except Russia and Ukraine, which are still at war with each other. The articles included in the survey are those indexed in databases with a minimum of rigor, including only journals benefiting from at least one independent peer review to approve the work.

— The volume of articles published in a country reflects, among other factors, the volume of investments made in scientific research a few years ago — explains Dante Cid, vice president of institutional relations at Elsevier for Latin America and also co-author of the report — Given the better level of investment made in recent years, we expected that national production would resume growth.

The researchers’ analysis also looked at countries’ long-term scientific productivity, measured using an index called the compound annual growth rate (CAGR). This figure uses averages over longer periods to look at trends beyond short-term disruptions like the pandemic. Divided by the number of article authors in each country, it indicates production capacity.

“The CAGR of the number of authors in Brazil, measured over ten-year periods, fell rapidly after 2013. From 1996 to 2013, this rate was always above 13% per year, and after 2013 it declined to 4.8% per year,” the authors say. “This is a low value for a country that is still building its national science, technology and innovation system.”

Generally, only developed countries have this composite rate below 5%, a sign that their science is already mature and that their academic community already has a minimum critical mass. This is not the case in Brazil.

The recovery in Brazilian scientific production in 2024 was driven by almost all research areas, with the energy and technology sector recording the largest increase (7.1%). The only area where the decline has yet to be reversed is the humanities, which reduced its article output by 1.1% last year.

In the humanities, however, the use of articles is not always the best measure for estimating output, because in some subfields of this field books are the most common form of work and take more time to edit.

Taking into account all areas, it is expected that in the next assessed year (2025), Brazil will at least reach pre-pandemic levels again. The country’s development plan must, however, include more investment in science, which implies an increase in the number of scientists, analysts say.