Scientific output by Brazilian states in Agricultural Sciences at Scopus: a bibliometric analysis

Introduction: descriptive study on Brazilian scientific output in agricultural sciences based on the scientific articles indexed in Scopus between 2008-2017. Method: it uses bibliometric indicators of production, and the software BibExcel and Excel to visualize area characteristics. The corpus is composed of 109,084 papers indexed by Scopus. Results: the research found that the growth of scientific output in agricultural sciences is not constant in the Brazilian states and, when examining the profile of publication by Brazilian federative units, it founds that the investigated states presented a preference for publication in national journals. This observation reiterates previous studies and, thus, it says that it is a tendency of publication in the agricultural sciences. Some states, such as Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, Parana, Sao Paulo and Ceara show a certain regionality in the dissemination profile of their scientific output since they prefer local journals to disseminate the results of their researches. Another prominent factor in the publication profile is the preferred language being English, even in national journals. Conclusions: The results of the study demonstrate the heterogeneity of the distribution of Brazilian scientific production in agricultural sciences, highlighting each Brazilian state.