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The Open Access in the scholarly communication is grouped into two areas referred to as gold and green roads. Some studies analyze the extent and magnitude of this phenomenon, but few show the effects in terms of impact and visibility. Our goal is to analyze these effects from the perspective of the economic model of the journals included in the database Scopus, in Latin America. The results show that both international and thematically, the presence of the journals that contribute to the development of "green route" exceeded the percentage of journals “golden route”. While in the peripheral and emerging regions, "golden route" predominate occupy the last positions of the distributions of impact.

Domestic citation to papers from the same country and the greater citation impact of documents involving international collaboration are two phenomena that have been extensively studied and contrasted. Here, however, we showthat it is not somuch a national bias,but that papers have a greater impact on their immediate environments, an impact that is diluted as that environment grows. For this reason, the greatest biases are observed in countries with a limited production. Papers that involve international collaboration have a greater impact in general, on the one hand, because they have multiple “immediate environments,” and on the other because of their greater quality or prestige. In short, one can say that science knows no frontiers. Certainly there is a greater impact on the authors’ immediate environment, but this does not necessarily have to coincide with their national environments, which fade in importance as the collaborative environment expands.

Analysis of the citations received by the journal El profesional de la información (EPI) according to the databases ISI Science Citation Index (WoS) from Thomson Reuters, and Scopus from Elsevier, which index the journal since 2006. There are three main groups (or themes) recognized, that potentially can generate citations: bibliometrics, medicine, and library and information science in Spanish.

Quantification of the university research since the convergence towards the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) began. The university system represents the 66,43% on the total Spanish scientific production with international visibility in the five-year period 2000-04, measured through the Web of Science. Seventy Spanish universities have an internationally visible production. Of them, 36 have more than 1,000 documents. The universities located in three Spanish regions: Catalonia, Madrid and Andalusia, accumulate the 58% of the academic total.

Argentina´s patterns of publication in the humanities and social sciences were studied for the period 2003-2012, using the Scopus database and distinguishing the geographic realm of the research. The results indicate that “topics of national scope” have grown and gained international visibility. They can be broadly characterized as having Spanish as the language of publication, and a marked preference for single authorship; in contrast, the publication of “global topics”, not geographically limited, characteristically have English as the language of divulgation, and institutional collaboration is stronger and more consolidated. Citation is apparently not determined only by the geographic realm of research, but also by language of publication, co-authorship, and the profiles of the journals where published. These results could contribute to constructive reflection upon publishing policy. The existence of a community of journals that tolerates biased patterns may make researchers echo and perpetuate poor practices, constructing or adapting the channels of communication. Such results also prove useful as a point of reference when evaluation criteria are elaborated by scientific committees, as unsupervised promotion and evaluation patterns could become based on local or overly subjective precepts, disregarding the disciplinary practices of the international scientific community.

Despite the time elapsed, the ranking, whatever its nature, remains the preferred tool for comparative analysis of all kinds of scientific institutions. Production, citation, human resources, financial resources, websites, everything can be used to create these weighted lists that we name this anglicized as widespread word: ranking. In our research group, and in order not to clash with the general trend, we created a ranking that we call RI3, the Latin American research institutions ranking.

In the first part of this work, we began to characterize the Spanish production in existing LIS Web of Science (ISI-WOS) and the Atlas of science, for the years 1995-2004. We saw the time evolution of this production, as well as their distribution by institutions. In this second installment, we will discuss the sources has been published and the cited literature and the authors with more international visibility.

The analysis of the scientific production of the different subject areas and disciplines is a recurring theme in bibliometric studies. Of all tested, one of the most studied is perhaps the LIS. This is due not so much of its importance as a discipline in the overall scientific context, but rather to the proximity to the discipline of persons engaging in this type of analysis.

Introduction: scientometric studies use relative indicators for the thematic characterization of scientific production, in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a country in a knowledge domain. Objective: the use of specialization patterns for the thematic characterization of the Cuban scientific production in health indexed by Scopus during the 1996-2010 period. Methods: descriptive study. The total number of documents covered by Scopus as well as the productivity and the annual growth rate were compiled. The thematic specialization index of the scientific production was estimated. Results: the thematic specialization index of the Cuban scientific production in health achieved higher levels than those of the Latin American region and the world. The highest indexes went to thematic domains where Cuba shows important health indicators. The published research papers in national journals covered by Scopus have a decisive influence on the specialization index of the main studied thematic categories. Conclusions: health sciences in general, and particularly the public health, have a leading role in the Cuban scientific production.

This paper characterises scientific output in biomedicine in Andalusia, and Spain as a whole, and conduct a first-time comparison to Europe- and world-wide production. The data were extracted from the Scopus database. Three families of indicators are explored to analyse research quantity, quality and collaboration. The results show an upward trend on biomedical output in Andalusia. Over 50 % was in clinical medicine, whose growth doubled the basic medicine. We found greater than nationwide specialisation in biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology, immunology and microbiology, and pharmacology, while psychology proved to be the most prominent emerging area. The publication in most cited journals together with national and international collaboration enhanced research visibility. More citable papers were published on basic than clinical medicine, and the number of citations received by the former was also larger. The higher citation rate in basic medicine may also be explained by the bigger percentage of papers published in international instead domestic journals. Hence, publication patterns would appear to affect research visibility. The methodology proposed may provide guidance for public policy makers to improve, encourage and intensify good biomedical research practice.

The portal SCImago Journal & Country Rank is born of the alliance between the company Elsevier BV and SCImago research group. As a result of this synergy has developed a platform scientific indicators from the information contained in the database Scopus.

The National Evaluation of research activity (CNEAI) was created in 1989 as an organization under the Ministry of Education and Science. Performs evaluation of research activities of university professors and CSIC scientific scales. The application for assessment (for six years) is voluntary, as it is to get a complement of productivity incentive, which aims to promote research work of university professors and best national and international dissemination.

As in most industrialized countries, in Spain there is an agency whose main objective is to evaluate and provide incentives for scientific research: the National Commission for Evaluation of Research Activity (CNEAI). In this paper we compare the output indicators ISI of Spanish universities, with the number of sections of research that has given CNEAI teachers.

Spanish scientific production in biomedicine and health sciences constitutes a significant amount of the total country's production. This large subject area is just over 45% of total Spanish production. Its importance and unique features make it, so much so, that has earned itself the drafting of numerous studies and reports remarkable.