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Profiling Brazil’s research elite: Insights from a cluster analysis of a large database

Cristian Rogério Foguesatto

Cristian Rogério Foguesatto

Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Business SchoolPorto Alegre, Brazil
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Foguesatto, Cristian Rogério
, 
Denis Borenstein

Denis Borenstein

Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Business SchoolPorto Alegre, Brazil
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Borenstein, Denis
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Marcelo Perlin

Marcelo Perlin

Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Business SchoolPorto Alegre, Brazil
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Perlin, Marcelo
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Takeyoshi Imasato

Takeyoshi Imasato

Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Business SchoolPorto Alegre, Brazil
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Imasato, Takeyoshi
  
Jun 12, 2025
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Article Category: Research Papers
Published Online: Jun 12, 2025
Page range: 183 - 198
Received: Mar 05, 2025
Accepted: May 14, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2025-0033
Keywords
© 2025 Cristian Rogério Foguesatto et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Figure 1.

Radar diagrams illustrating the scores of the three identified clusters across the three PCA components, derived from the cluster centers presented in Table 2. Green represents the advanced supervisors, pink, the book publisher/organizer and yellow, the generalists.
Radar diagrams illustrating the scores of the three identified clusters across the three PCA components, derived from the cluster centers presented in Table 2. Green represents the advanced supervisors, pink, the book publisher/organizer and yellow, the generalists.

Scores of the final centers of clusters_

Cluster Sample % of sample ASAP BOF MUS
The advanced supervisors 3398 0.244 0.200 -0.235 1.30
The book publisher/organizer 1141 0.081 -0.043 2.57 -0.013
The generalists 9464 0.675 -0.06 -0.22 -0.46

The science fields of the elite researchers_

Absolute (relative) frequency
Field AS BP G
Agricultural 761 (41.56%) 71 (3.88%) 999 (54.56%)
Applied Social 368 (36.22%) 183 (18.01%) 465 (45.73%)
Health 357 (23.91%) 86 (5.76%) 1050 (70.33%)
Biological 421 (18.19%) 19 (0.82%) 1875 (80.99%)
Humanities 261 (15.71%) 559 (33.65%) 840 (50.57%)
Linguistics and Arts 53 (11.67%) 167 (36.78%) 234 (51.54%)
Exact and Earth 466 (14.44%) 30 (0.93%) 2731 (84.63%)
Engineering 711 (35.43%) 26 (1.30%) 1270 (63.28%)
Relative proportion 24.2% 8.1% 67.5%

The science fields of the super-elite researchers_

Absolute (relative) frequency
Field AS BP G
Agricultural 114 (37.38%) 19 (6.23%) 172 (56.39%)
Applied Social 21 (17.21%) 32 (26.23%) 69 (56.56%)
Health 46 (14.6%) 22 (6.98%) 247 (78.41%)
Biological 64 (12.96%) 7 (1.42%) 423 (85.63%)
Humanities 7 (2.36%) 128 (43.1%) 162 (54.55%)
Linguistics and Arts 3 (3.95%) 21 (27.63%) 52 (68.42%)
Exact and Earth 36 (7.0%) 4 (0.78%) 474 (92.22%)
Engineering 91 (25.56%) 11 (3.09%) 254 (71.35%)
Relative proportion 15.4% 9.8% 74.7%

Descriptive statistics of elite researchers by clusters_

Variable Mean Median Standard deviation
AS BP G AS BP G AS BP G
Years of PhD 20.19 23.33 26.88 20.00 23.00 26.00 6.22 8.02 9.30
Published books 0.06 0.37 0.04 0.03 0.27 0.00 0.10 0.35 0.07
Published book chapters 0.61 2.38 0.36 0.41 2.05 0.19 0.63 1.52 0.43
Edited books 0.06 0.52 0.03 0.00 0.42 0.00 0.11 0.45 0.07
Amount of citations 24.66 8.26 23.96 7.86 0.26 7.40 97.77 41.20 76.63
Mean of citations by publications 14.02 6.63 20.39 9.75 2.00 13.04 30.74 42.58 50.15
Minimum of citations by publications 1.41 1.09 2.02 1.00 1.00 1.00 3.49 2.76 15.07
Maximum of citations by publications 87.03 45.18 135.51 37.50 3.00 47.00 261.76 296.54 438.83
Number of scientific papers 5.25 3.92 3.43 4.29 2.76 2.71 3.85 3.72 2.85
Proportion of first author 0.82 1.72 0.71 0.58 1.41 0.52 0.85 1.33 0.68
Mean of authors by publication 5.64 2.77 7.13 5.20 2.10 4.88 6.03 2.66 35.86
Proportion articles in English 2.88 0.98 2.35 2.14 0.20 1.79 2.99 2.26 2.46
Proportion articles in Portuguese 2.34 2.85 1.06 1.68 2.19 0.70 2.18 2.47 1.13
Proportion articles in Spanish 0.02 0.06 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.15 0.04
Master’s dissertation supervisions 1.53 1.17 0.65 1.40 1.04 0.61 0.70 0.63 0.39
Doctoral thesis supervisions 0.77 0.73 0.45 0.67 0.67 0.41 0.52 0.43 0.30
Undergraduate thesis supervision 1.48 0.82 0.26 1.20 0.52 0.12 1.28 1.05 0.34
Scientific initiation supervision 1.88 1.03 0.60 1.71 0.84 0.50 1.20 0.88 0.51
Postdoctoral supervision 0.14 0.17 0.11 0.08 0.11 0.05 0.19 0.21 0.17

Descriptive statistics of super-elite researchers by clusters_

Variable Mean Median Standard Deviation
AS BP G AS BP G AS BP G
Years of PhD 26.81 31.16 35.63 27.00 30.00 35.00 5.25 7.54 8.76
Published books 0.09 0.41 0.05 0.05 0.33 0.03 0.11 0.35 0.08
Published book chapters 0.68 2.40 0.39 0.50 2.06 0.24 0.62 1.52 0.44
Edited books 0.05 0.47 0.03 0.00 0.36 0.00 0.10 0.40 0.06
Amount of citations 58.06 11.51 38.88 22.00 0.41 12.65 204.58 31.46 115.91
Mean of citations by publications 21.13 7.04 25.06 15.02 3.00 16.71 43.71 11.15 53.28
Minimum of citations by publications 1.41 1.09 2.02 1.00 1.00 1.00 3.49 2.76 15.07
Maximum of citations by publications 87.03 45.18 135.51 37.50 3.00 47.00 261.76 296.54 438.83
Number of scientific papers 5.25 3.92 3.43 4.29 2.76 2.71 3.85 3.72 2.85
Proportion of first author 0.82 1.72 0.71 0.58 1.41 0.52 0.85 1.33 0.68
Mean of authors by publication 5.64 2.77 7.13 5.20 2.10 4.88 6.03 2.66 35.86
Proportion articles in English 2.88 0.98 2.35 2.14 0.20 1.79 2.99 2.26 2.46
Proportion articles in Portuguese 2.34 2.85 1.06 1.68 2.19 0.70 2.18 2.47 1.13
Proportion articles in Spanish 0.02 0.06 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.15 0.04
Master’s dissertation supervisions 1.53 1.17 0.65 1.40 1.04 0.61 0.70 0.63 0.39
Doctoral thesis supervisions 0.77 0.73 0.45 0.67 0.67 0.41 0.52 0.43 0.30
Undergraduate thesis supervision 1.48 0.82 0.26 1.20 0.52 0.12 1.28 1.05 0.34
Scientific initiation supervision 1.88 1.03 0.60 1.71 0.84 0.50 1.20 0.88 0.51
Postdoctoral supervision 0.14 0.17 0.11 0.08 0.11 0.05 0.19 0.21 0.17

Factor loadings of the researchers’ variables_

Variable ASAP BOF MUS Communalities
Master’s dissertation supervision .728 .655
Doctoral thesis supervision .656 .590
Undergraduate thesis supervision .786 .655
Scientific initiation supervision .726 .564
Posdoctoral supervision .653 .461
Published books .750 .596
Edited books .822 .693
Published book chapters .851 .771
Amount of scientific papers .873 .796
Proportion of scientific papers in English .876 .811
Eigenvalues 3.13 2.13 1.28
Explained variance (%) 31.34 21.31 12.80

Descriptive statistics of elite researchers_

Variable Mean Median SD Min. Max.
Years of PhD 24.97 24.00 9.02 3.00 69.00
Published Books 0.08 0.02 0.16 0.00 3.11
Published book chapters 0.58 0.28 0.84 0.00 11.00
Edited books 0.08 0.00 0.20 0.00 3.89
Years PQ 12.71 14.00 5.06 0.00 18.00
Published scientific papers 3.91 3.05 3.29 0.00 47.33
Proportion of scientific papers in English 2.36 1.73 2.62 0.00 46.33
Master’s dissertation supervisions 0.90 0.78 0.63 0.00 7.43
Doctoral thesis supervisions 0.55 0.48 0.40 0.00 5.65
Undergraduate thesis supervisions 0.60 0.26 0.91 0.00 19.50
Scientific initiation supervisions 0.95 0.71 0.94 0.00 15.56
Postdoctoral supervisions 0.12 0.06 0.18 0.00 3.33
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