Maturity of a scientific field: a methodological proposition considering Brazilian paleontology

Abstract

The development of science and its communication dynamics have been examined with the use of techniques from Bibliometrics, Scientometric and Webometrics. The use of such approaches allows a variety of quantitative analyzes of the information recorded, based on the impact factor, citations, authorship and co-authorship, among other aspects. The aim of the present study is to propose a methodology to estimate the degree of maturity or consolidation of a scientific field. The methodology is based on authorship information, more specifically the flow of authors over time. For the application of this methodology, data from Brazilian Paleontology was used, a field of national importance that lacks quantitative studies that allows to understand its current degree of consolidation. The proposition has four main steps, which includes the definition of the key variable, namely authorship, definition and collection of data from the field production, data organization and analysis of the authorships. From the analysis of the authorships of Brazilian publications in Paleontology, indexed in Web Of Science, from 1991 to 2015, it was found that the number of authors in a given period of time shows expressive and constant growth and that there is a core of authors who contribute in a constant manner to the field, with a prospect of increase, due to the large number of newcomers. The proposition proved to be not only feasible to estimate the maturity in this case study, but also opens up the possibility of new applications, whether it is to monitor the advances in the maturity of this field in Brazil, as well as in other fields of knowledge