Evaluation of the scientific production of the Instituto de Investigaciones en Microbiología y Parasitología Médica (UBA-CONICET).

Introduction: SciVal is a bibliometric tool used to assess the scientific output of institutions, such as the Institute of Research on Medical Microbiology and Parasitology (IMPaM), doubly dependent on Buenos Aires University (UBA) and the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET). IMPaM studies medical microbiology and parasitology and has many research projects. Assessing it through SciVal will make it possible to identify areas of strengths and weaknesses to improve the scientific output at that institution. Goal: assess the scientific output of IMPaM with SciVal, describing the methodology, results, conclusions, and recommendations to improve research at that institution. Methods: the scientific production was analyzed, examining the research areas, the influence of that institution in the field of study, financing, and available resources. A database of researchers was used to carry out the analysis, and the scientific output was compared with similar institutions. Results: the study found that more than one-half of the articles of that Institution are open access, and fostering their publication in open access journals without any embargo period is suggested. Besides, it was stressed that the most representative thematic areas are related to the social object of that Institution and that international collaboration is essential to scientific research. Finally, a decrease in citations by publication was noticed, keeping the impact of weighted citations by field, which suggests that the articles keep their relevance in their area. Conclusions: IMPaM researches and publishes in Medicine, Immunology and Microbiology, Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology. Even though the number of open-access articles is large, it is below average in the Impact of Weighted Citations by Field, and it is necessary to strengthen the international collaboration links and widen thematic diversity to keep their relevance in scientific research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]