Bibliometrics and Scientometrics, essential knowledge and practice for students of medical sciences

Abstract

During the last century there has been a spectacular increase in scientific production at international and national level, as well as its compilation in automated bibliographic databases, whose results have great influence on the economic and social development of countries, which demands the quantification and evaluation of scientific and technological activity, its results and yields. Bibliometrics and scientometrics are increasingly positioned as essential disciplines to measure the results of science, and despite this, not all members of the student scientific community recognize them as necessary in the information and communications era, as a way to improve and bring to higher levels the excellence in the student research process and its impact on scientific publications. Bibliometrics studies the quantitative aspects of the production, dissemination and use of recorded information, to which end it develops mathematical models and measurements that, in turn, serve to make forecasts and decisions about these processes. For its part, scientometrics studies the quantitative aspects of science as a discipline or economic activity, is part of the sociology of science, and finds application in the establishment of scientific policies, where it includes, among others, those of publication