Productividad científica de investigadores en ciencias marinas en América Latina

This research analyzes patterns of scientific production, citation and collaborative networks under three relationships (researcher/researcher, researcher/center, and researcher/country), of the most productive researchers of four Latin American Marine Research Centers (MICs) over a 20-year period (2000-2020) from a bibliometric perspective. The Scopus search engine was used for the respective bibliometric analyses. In total, 57 most productive researchers were identified among the four centers; 5, 7, 14and 31 for Centro i~mar, IOUSP, IICYM and CICESE, respectively. In two (i~mar and IICYM) of the four centers, researchers(AB) and (OI) recorded the highest number of publications, and were also the most cited; however, this pattern did not hold truefor IOUSP and CICESE researchers. e collaboration network among the most productive researchers is segmented in certaindefined groups, which causes a lack of internal cooperation among them, especially in Centro i~mar and IOUSP. In addition, it was evidenced that the most productive researchers concentrate their collaborations with other researchers belonging to Universities, Institutions or Centers of their own country, and very scarcely with international Centers, being their international cooperation conservative which in turn demonstrates scientific autonomy, and does not require external partners to make their research visible. This research contributes with the knowledge of the most productive centers and is the basis for future studies that suggests orienting and extending the analysis of the productivity of researchers with fewer publications and citations, as well as the analysisof their internal collaboration network.