Desempeño de becarios Mexicanos en la producción de conocimiento cientifico ¿de la bibliometria a la politica cientifica? (Performance of Mexican scholarship owners in the production of scientific knowledge. From biliometrics to science policy?)

Abstract

During recent decades, several actions have been taken to build up Mexico's science manpower base. Thousands of scholarships have been awarded to Mexicans to pursue posgraduate studies abroad. However, the number of PhD-holders the country expected to have by the beginning of the third millenniumm is still low despite the large amount of money the country has been investing in the training of doctoral students: $US 250,000 each. Therefore, we attempted to analyse the performance of the 1995 Mexican scholarship recipients awarded by the National Council for Science and Technology of Mexico for study abroad in all disciplines, assuming that many of them will contribute to the development of the Mexican science base after taking their knowledge back home. The visibility of the 680 study-abroad scholarship recipients was measured through the ISI Web of Science. The esteem measure was obtained from Mexico's National Researchers' System (SNI) - the Mexican government recognition - data. As little or nothing is known about the performance of the Mexican government scholarship programme, this study provides information pertinent to this complex and controversial issue. The data reveals facts that might stimulate rethinking of the national sience policy regarding support for doctoral training.