The National Researchers System in Mexico: 21 years of research output at institutions of higher education (1991-2011)

The aim of this paper is to analyze how a system of economic stimulus and recognition to the research activities in Mexico has impacted the scientific productivity of Higher Education Institutions (hei). This analysis uses a database with information of 27,667 Mexican researchers who have been benefited from the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (sni) at least for one year among the period 1991-2011 and includes 122,406 articles published by these researchers in isi journals. In order to determine the quantity and quality of the productivity of hei we considered as units of measurement the publications and citations. The results indicate that only 28% of the hei analyzed is sued one or more publications in the study period. Additionally, our results show that in 10 universities are grouped both the higher quantity of publications and the higher quantity of quotes. Moreover, it is shown that the maximum age of productivity is at 58 years in the case of the female researchers and 57 years for male researchers. Finally, one of the main contributions of this work is that it show that collaboration activities are continuously growing among researchers.