Research and publication policies in Colombia: the case of the Revista Colombiana de Entomología through a co-word analysis

Objetivo:  Through a co-words analysis of the papers published on the Revista Colombiana de Entomología, study historical changes in research and the influence of the national government policies in sciences and technology.

Methods:  Authorship frequencies and co-word network analyses with packages of the R programming language. Frequencies of authorship and networks were divided into four periods according to changes in national policies about scientific publications.

Results:  The co-word network 1975 to 1995 is made up of 14 keywords (nodes) and 47 relations (edges), that from 1996 to 1999 is made up of 28 key words with 35 relations, that of 2000 to 2015 is composed of 52 keywords with 50 relationships; and the fourth from 2016 to 2022 is composed of 31 keywords with 29 relationships. The keyword with the highest number of links (degree) and betweenness centrality is “biological control”. The words with the highest closeness values are different in each period; For example, from 1975 to 1995 it is “chrysanthemum”, from 1996 to 1999 it is “coffee”, from 2000 to 2015 it is “mass breeding” and from 2016-2022 it is “insects”. International authors consistently appeared from the year 2000 in agreement with the publication of more explicit regulations against endogamy.

Conclusions:  Research trends are linked to the more important crops of the country along its history, with a strong interest in biological control. The changes in the themes related with publication policies are more evident in the year 2000, when the exogamy policy was established for the magazines, and the emphasis in international partnerships for the local academia. Public policies are not related to the characteristics of women's participation in the Colombian Journal of Entomology, maintaining a low percentage throughout the entire period studied, attributing the exceptional cases of female productivity to general social processes.

KEYWORDS:
Co-word analysis; RStudio; Academic journals