Are the Publications of Mexican Astronomers in Line with World Trends?

We present an evaluation of the 2010-2019 production of refereed papers by Mexican astronomers. We show that the yearly number of papers grows by a factor of ~ 2 (over this period), and that this growth appears to be due to the combination of a decrease in the average fraction of Mexican co-authors and an increase in the number of Mexican researchers active in astronomy. We also show the behaviour of a set of chosen astronomical fields, and an evaluation of Mexican institutions with active astronomers. We find that the growth of Mexican astronomical publications in the 2010-2019 period can be explained as a combination of the growth in the number of researchers (as found in studies of the dominant countries in astronomical research) and also of a growing “import industry” of research papers. This latter mechanism is due to a trend of growing participation of small numbers of Mexican astronomers in large collaborations with foreign researchers. Finally, a comparison of these results with astronomical publications of countries with large numbers of researchers is made.

Keywords: Astronomy, Bibliometric analisis, Bibliometric indicators, Mexico, productivity, Publication rates, Research evaluation.