Diffusion factor: Ameasure of knowledge dissemination thorugh citations

This paper discusses the analysis of the citations received by the publications of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (ibge) in the period of 2001-2010 under perspective of the theory of diffusion factors. Considering that citations represent a way to measure the spreading of scientific ideas, it is presumable that the larger the number of different authors, institutions and countries citing one idea, the larger its diffusion is. Identifies 3,158 documents citing ibge’s scientific output. Out of 1,272 institutions which citing authors are affiliated with, 748 (58.80%) are Brazilian institutions or based in Brazil, while 518 (40.72%) are from other countries. Institutions focused on education lead (47.96%) the amount, followed by R&D (22.88%), and the rest (29.16%) is lying on public sectors. A number of 6,168 (81.3%) from 7,587 citation occurrences happens to be of authors with affiliations with Brazilian institutions, with the rest being distributed between the other South American countries (82.35%), North America (9.71%), Europe (6.93%), and Central America, Asia, Oceania, Africa and Middle East (sum is about 1%). Applying the diffusion factors proposed by Rousseau, Liu & Ye (2012), the Gini Index obtained varies from 0.62 in 2009 and 0.72 in 2001 and 2003, respectively. Concludes that the diffusion factor is satisfactory because there is a large number of authors, institutions and different countries that cite ibge’s publications.