A bibliometric look at the Latin American and Caribbean library and information science research

Abstract

Discussion about the need to develop research capabilities are frequent. Fields such as Library and Information Science are not the exception. Therefore we attempted lo determine, bibliometrically, the publication activity of the Latin American and the Caribbean countries.
The country's profile was based on data retrieved from Library and Information Science Abstracts, Library Literature and Information Science Abstracts. A total of 1.911 unique records was retrieved. We found that: Brazil was the most productive country; Brazilian journals, as a result, published the majority of retrieved papers. Latin América and Caribbean professionals use English and Portuguese to communicate with their peers. We concluded that results could be useful to higher education institutions, among others, in order lo rethink their role as centres of training of the professionals that, as members of scientific cornmunities, would have to develop research as well as to solve problems of adoption or adaptation of knowledge generated outside de region.