Become Associated or Perish: Functional Collaboration within the Social Sciences in Latin America

Abstract

This paper analyses the structure of scientific collaboration within the disciplines of the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities in Latin America between 2005 and 2015. This includes the reasons that lead specialists to work collaboratively, based on the fact that these communities adhere to the global trend towards an increasingly exogenous scientific dialogue. The analysis relies on 138,865 refereed articles by Latin American authors published in 838 journals indexed by Redalyc.org, and a survey of 515 researchers in the region. It was concluded that the trends towards and reasons for co-authoring are a result of current scientific policies, which have had an impact on the purpose of research and publications, and communication between researchers.