A strategy for obtaining social benefits from the gene revolution

The cost of Latin American science Introduction for the second issue of CBP-Latin America

Latin American researchers in science and engineering (S&E), including those in biology and biomedical sciences, are frequently exposed to unstable conditions of financial support, material and human resources, and a limited number of positions at public and private institutions. Such uncertainties impose continuous challenges for the scientific community which, in the best of cases, responds with careful planning and creativity, and in the worst scenario endures the migration of scientists to the USA or Europe. Still, the number of scientific publications from Latin American institutions in the last decade increased at a much faster rate than publications from the USA and Canada. A brief analysis per country of the gross domestic product (GDP) spent in research and development (R&D) and the S&E production reported by the Pascal bibliographic database suggests that the number and quality of S&E publications is directly proportional to the financial support for R&D. However, the investment in R&D in Latin America did not increase at the same rate (from 0.49 to 0.55% of GDP, from 1990 to 2003) at which S&E publications did in the same period (2.9-fold increase, from 1988 to 2001). In Latin America, the traditional financial support for scientific research continues to be from federal and state government funds, associated in some cases with institutional funds that are mostly directed towards administrative costs and infrastructure maintenance. The aim of this introduction is to briefly discuss the production cost of articles published in refereed S&E journals, including the cost of the scientific research behind them, and, at the same time, to increase the awareness of the high quality of scientific research in Latin American institutions despite the many challenges, especially financial constraints, faced by their scientists. The second issue of Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology dedicated to Latin America ("The Face of Latin American Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology") celebrates, by means of 26 manuscripts from five countries, the diversity and quality of biological science in the continent.