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Brazilian researchers increasingly publish in English

For decades, shortcomings in language skills were an obstacle for Brazilian academics. This has now changed, but it might carry new problems in its wake

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Photo: REDPIXEL.PL/Shutterstock

In recent decades, academic production by Latin American researchers has grown faster than in the rest of the world, and Brazil continues to be the largest in the region. But growth has shed light on a curious trend: both Portuguese and Spanish languages are losing ground to English in the academic world.

84 percent of Latin American researchers published in 2021 wrote their papers in English

Growth. In a recent report, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) shows that over a period of 40 years, the number of reviews and academic articles by Latin American scholars on the Web of Science – an international academic database that annually indexes 20,000 journals from all countries and fields of study – grew exponentially.

On the platform, academic production in Latin American publications rose from 5,655 articles in 1981 to 156,000 in 2020, registering the highest growth rate in the world until the mid-2000s, when...

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