Progress and perspectives of the Brazilian scientific production in international journals in the field of motor behavior

In view of the fact that one of the key indicators of scientific production is the number of papers published in international journals, and of the apparent growing interest in the area of motor behavior, we conducted a survey of articles published by Brazilian researchers in this area over the last 10 years (1999-2008) in international journals rated “Qualis International-A” and “Qualis International-B” by CAPES. This quantification was performed to provide a qualified viewpoint regarding the profile of Brazilian scientific production of international repercussion in the area of motor behavior. Articles were identified using the Google Scholar, Pubmed, Science Direct, and Scopus search systems, with the search being restricted to characteristic terms involving motor behavior and to researchers associated with Brazilian universities. The results showed an increase in production over the last 5 years of the period studied, with the peak in 2006. In addition, Brazilian scientific production was concentrated in four public universities. These results suggest that in order to keep growing, the new groups should work in collaboration with productive laboratories, decentralizing the scientific production.