Characterization of the scientific production in Ecuador for the period 2007-2017 in Scopus

Ecuador has dramatically increased its scientific production in the last years, being the sixth country of Latin America and The Caribbean with greater number of articles indexed in Scopus. The objective of this work was to study the evolution of scientific production in Ecuador in Scopus for the period 2007-2017, obtaining for each year the number of citations, the percentage of articles in the different quartiles, the percentage of articles written in English, Spanish or other languages, and the percentage of documents published as articles, reviews or conferences and proceedings among others. The results showed an increase in the proportion of articles in Q4 and a decrease in Q1; an increase in the proportion of articles written in Spanish; an increase in the percentage of articles published as conferences and proceedings; and there is no evidence on the amount of the citations. These results suggest that the increase in the scientific production in Ecuador does not entail an increase in the quality measured as usability (citations), visibility (language), and impact (quartile), which could be a result of the incipient science that is being generated in the country.