Publishing Latin American STS Studies Outside the Region: Visibility, Themes and Theoretical Perspectives

Noella Invernizzi, Universidade Federal do Parana

Over the last decade STS studies have expanded in Latin America. Concomitantly, science policy and evaluation methods in universities in the region have stimulated the internationalization of scientific practices. Publishing in international, English-written journals are at the center of this strategy. While publishing in such journals increases the visibility of the science produced in Latin America, some side effects have been reported, such as orienting research towards topics of global interest in detriment of local relevant issues, and leaning towards mainstream science, adopting well-recognized theoretical approaches developed in northern countries (Giménez Toledo, 2018; Hicks, 2006; Kreimer, 2015; Vessuri et al., 2014). In this presentation, I examine Latin American STS work published in five relevant international STS journals between 2018-2019 focusing on: (a) the visibility of Latin American scholarship, measured by its relative frequency; (b) the themes published in terms of their local/global character, addressed by paper content analysis; and (c) the theoretical perspectives adopted, examined through paper content and references analysis. The journals object of research are three pioneers in the field: Social Studies of Science (1971), Science, Technology & Human Values (1976), and Science & Technology Studies (1988), and two newer journals from newcomer regions in terms of the constitution of the STS field: Science, Technology and Society (1996), and the East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (2007). Results suggest increasing, but still frail international visibility, focus on themes under global discussion, but incipient attention to specific developing countries issues, and predominance of well-established theoretical approaches.