Attraction network among Brazilian Health Sciences journals

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/biblios.2025.1302

Keywords:

Citation analysis, citation networks, scientific journals, attraction index

Abstract

Objective. To construct a citation network among Brazilian scientific journals in the Health Sciences based on the Attraction Index. The Attraction Index is a measure that represents the frequency of citations between two journals relative to the total number of citations received by each of them. It represents a weighted citation metric that provides a more detailed analysis of the proximity between two publications within a given scientific context. Method. Data were extracted from OpenAlex for articles published between 2018 and 2022 in Brazilian journals indexed with the concept “Medicine” and with an h-index greater than 10. The citation data from this set were processed in a cloud infrastructure, calculating both the citation frequency between two journals and the total number of citations received by each journal. The Attraction Index between journals was computed, and a network was constructed using Gephi software. The network data were then loaded into VOSviewer software, generating a graph representing the attraction network, with an interactive version made available online. Results. The network was composed of 273 Brazilian journals in Health Sciences and related fields. Journals with higher impact and broader thematic scope exhibited greater centrality within the network. Specialized journals tended to attract each other, forming clusters of areas and specialties related to the Health Sciences. Conclusions. The Attraction Index is a relevant metric for analyzing thematic adherence among journals within a citation network, as it identifies thematic relationships between two journals based on the frequency of citations between them relative to the total impact of each. The Attraction Index also demonstrated applicability in analyzing thematic relationships across different disciplines, as well as in identifying interdisciplinary journals and research areas.

Author Biographies

Fabio Lorensi do Canto, Federal University of Santa Catarina

Ph.D. (2022) and a Master’s degree (2018) in Information Science from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Library Science – Information Management from the State University of Santa Catarina (UDESC, 2005) and a Bachelor’s degree in Law from CESUSC College (2012). He works as a Librarian/Documentalist at the Central Library of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and as a Substitute Professor in the Department of Library Science at the State University of Santa Catarina (UDESC). He is a research fellow in the Laguna Project, coordinated by the Brazilian Institute for Information in Science and Technology (IBICT).

Washington Luís Ribeiro de Carvalho Segundo, Brazilian Institute for Information in Science and Technology

Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Brasília (UnB), including a research period at King’s College London, and a Master’s degree in the same field from UnB. He also holds Bachelor’s and Teaching degrees in Mathematics from the same institution. He is currently the General Coordinator for Scientific and Technological Information at the Brazilian Institute for Information in Science and Technology (Ibict), where he leads projects related to Open Science, digital repositories, systems interoperability, and scientific data management. Among his main contributions at Ibict are the coordination of initiatives such as Oasisbr, a portal that aggregates and disseminates Brazilian open access scholarly content, and the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD), which centralizes the academic output of graduate programs across the country.

Adilson Luiz Pinto, Federal University of Santa Catarina

Former CNPq Research Productivity Fellow (PQ) in Information Science (2017–2020 and 2021–2024). Supervisor of Master’s and Doctoral theses since 2011, with 12 doctoral and 17 master’s dissertations defended. Professor in the Graduate Program in Design at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). Former Coordinator of the Graduate Program in Information Science at UFSC (2017–2019 and 2019–2021); Coordinator of the UFSC Information Observatory; creator of the YouTube channel Estudos Métricos da Informação; coordinator of the Interinstitutional Doctoral Program (DINTER) with Unimontes and the Interinstitutional Master’s Program (MINTER) with the Federal Police. He also served as Deputy Coordinator of the Graduate Program in Information Science at UFSC (2014–2016) and as Director of Research and Extension at UFSC (2011–2012). Full Professor at the Department of Information Science at UFSC (undergraduate programs in Librarianship, Archival Science, and Information Science). Visiting Professor at: (i) Universidad de Panamá, (ii) Universidad Nacional de la República, Uruguay, (iii) Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, (iv) Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, (v) Université Montpellier III, and (vi) Universidade Estadual de Londrina. Academic degrees: Bachelor’s in Librarianship from PUC-Campinas (2000); Master’s in Information Science from PUC-Campinas (2004); Master’s in Audiovisual Documentation from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (2006); Ph.D. in Documentation from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (2007). Member of the LEMME Lab and Leader of the Metric Studies in Data Librarianship and Geosciences group.

Daniel Sundfeld, University of Brasília

Assistant Professor at the University of Brasília, teaching in the Software Engineering program, Faculty of Engineering Sciences and Technologies (FCTE), since 2022. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Brasília (2017), with a doctoral research internship (sandwich Ph.D.) at the University of Copenhagen (2015) as a CAPES Fellow. His doctoral dissertation, “Primary and Secondary Alignment of Biological Sequences on High-Performance Architectures,” received an Honorable Mention Award from the Brazilian Computer Society (SBC). His main research background is in parallel and high-performance computing, graphics processing units (GPUs), and cloud computing, which he applies to solving complex problems in Bioinformatics.

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Published

2025-11-03

How to Cite

Canto, F. L. do, Carvalho Segundo, W. L. R. de, Pinto, A. L., & Sundfeld, D. (2025). Attraction network among Brazilian Health Sciences journals. Biblios Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, (esp.), e005. https://doi.org/10.5195/biblios.2025.1302

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No. esp. (2025)

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Copyright (c) 2025 Fabio Lorensi do Canto, Washington Luís Ribeiro de Carvalho Segundo, Adilson Luiz Pinto, Daniel Sundfeld

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