Piter Boll‡, Lucas Krüger§Corresponding author: Lucas Krüger ( lkruger@inach.cl ) © Piter Boll, Lucas Krüger. This is an open access preprint distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citation:
Boll P, Krüger L (2023) Productivity and impact of the Unisinos' Postgraduate Program in Biology and the consequences of its interruption for Brazilian science. ARPHA Preprints. https://doi.org/10.3897/arphapreprints.e103082 |  |
On 22 July 2022, the Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos), a private institution in southern Brazil, announced the interruption of 12 of its postgraduate programs, including the Postgraduate Program of Biology (PPG Biologia), whose professors founded the journal Neotropical Biology and Conservation. We conducted a bibliometric analysis of papers published by PPG Biologia in the past 20 years to assess its impact on biological research at a national level. The number of publications and citations increased constantly over the years, with publications growing exponentially. Although most collaborations with other research programs occurred inside Brazil, a significant number of studies were co-authored by researchers from other countries from at least four continents. The main research lines focused on biological sciences, ecology, sociology, education, environmental sciences, and genetics. Despite being affected by the decrease in research funding and the reduction of personnel, PPG Biologia kept its high impact score according to the national evaluation, above that of most programs in private universities. With a team of renowned researchers working on different and sometimes unique research lines, the interruption of PPG Biologia will harm the progress of biological research and conservation across the Neotropical realm.