IMPACT AND INFLUENCE

摘要

In Latin America it is very difficult, if not impossible, to reach a quantitative determination of the importance or the reach of the diffusion of scientific journals. The existence in the so-called impact factor used by the Science Citation Index (SCI) produced by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) has been criticized and even objected by many scientists for diverse reasons, many of which are indeed valid. Notwithstanding, this index has not stopped being utilized by a clear majority of institutions as the principal guide for measuring the insertion of researchers in the so-called mainstream science. The dominance of the Anglo-Saxon world in this science is such that scientists from other latitudes, especially those who publish in a language other than English, have been unjustly ostracized.