Do Latin American universities engage industry in the scientific publication? A bibliometrics approach through Scopus

The main objective of this work is to determine the collaboration level of Latin American universities with companies in terms of scientific co-authorship, and to identify the main institutions involved in these collaborations. To do this, all publications from 2009 to 2018 with at least one co-author belonging to each of 20 Latin American countries, and another co-author affiliated to a company, were extracted from Elsevier’s Scival (powered by Scopus data), obtaining a set of 22,469 records, from which 1,531 companies (both of public and private nature) and 428 Latin American universities were identified. Despite publications co-authored by universities and companies are highly-cited, results evidence low percentages of academic collaboration between Latin American universities and companies over the period. Just few firms (mainly from Pharmacy, Technology and Petroleum markets) have established strong connections with few universities, mainly from Brazil, whose performance masks the remaining minor linkages established in other countries. Otherwise, the presence of publicly-traded companies (e.g., Petrobras, Agrosavia, Embrapa, YPF or Petróleos Mexicanos) is also remarkable. The establishment of stable public policies aimed at promoting and strengthening University-Industry relations in the region, and based on the integration and regulation of these actions in the researcher's activities, is recommended.