Of the approximately 250,000 scientific articles published by Brazilian researchers between 2011 and 2016, only 1% had one or more authors affiliated with a private company, according to the Research in Brazil report presented by Clarivate Analytics, formerly known as Thomson Reuters Intellectual Property & Science. The report, released in January, evaluated the global performance of Brazilian research using data from InCites, a platform based on articles, conference papers, books, patents, websites, chemical structures, compounds, and reactions indexed in the Web of Science.
In total, researchers from 232 companies participated as coauthors of scientific articles in the period analyzed. Large American pharmaceutical companies with branches in Brazil, such as Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, were the most frequent contributors. Petrobras was the only Brazilian company to significantly contribute to academic output in the country. The state-owned company accounted for 10% of industrial R&D spending in 2013 and was credited as coauthor in 190 articles published between 2011 and 2016.
According to the Research in Brazil report, data on industrial participation in scientific output in Brazil is available largely thanks to government actions aimed at supporting intersectoral collaboration and knowledge transfer. The Innovation Act was introduced in 2007 to simplify collaboration between public and private R&D centers, granting tax benefits to small and medium-sized enterprises that invested in R&D infrastructure in Brazil. Despite these efforts, there was no notable effect on the proportion of papers involving industrial collaborators, the report said.
Republish