Astronomy in Chile: Assessment of scientific productivity through a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

The skies of Northern Chile are considered among the best in the world for astronomy due to their geographical, climatic and atmospheric conditions. In fact, during the last several decades, a great number of astronomical observatories have been built by space research institutions devoted to space research, turning Chile into one of the countries with the greatest astronomical observation capacity in the world. Consequently, it is relevant to explore and assess the development of astronomy in Chile during the last ten years (2005-2015), carrying out a bibliometric analysis to extract traditional metrics, complemented with alternative metrics, to identify the Chilean production and scientific contribution of research in this field of knowledge. The results from traditional metrics, based on the information obtained in the Web of Science (WoS) database analyzed through InCites for the Astronomy & Astrophysics category indicate a sustained increase of the scientific production for the discipline during the last ten years. In particular, the Normalized Citation Impact of organizations and institutions conducting research in Chile is above the worldwide average. On the other hand, the alternative metrics, including for instance, the altmetrics types presented by the SCOPUS database, reflect that the Chilean research impact is much lower in the context of social networks.