In recent years scholars have built maps of science by connecting the academic fields that cite each other, are cited together, or that cite a similar literature. But since scholars cannot always publish in the fields they cite, or that cite them, these science maps are only rough proxies for the potential of a scholar, organization, or country, to enter a new academic field. Here we use a large dataset of scholarly publications disambiguated at the individual level to create a map of science—or research space—where links connect pairs of fields based on the probability that an individual has published in both of them. We find that the research space is a significantly more accurate predictor of the fields that individuals and organizations will enter in the future than citation based science maps. At the country level, however, the research space and citations based science maps are equally accurate. These findings show that data on career trajectories—the set of fields that individuals have previously published in—provide more accurate predictors of future research output for more focalized units—such as individuals or organizations—than citation based science maps.

Some sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB), mainly belonging to the Desulfovibrionaceae family, have evolved the capability to conserve energy through microbial extracellular electron transfer (EET), suggesting that this process may be more widespread than previously believed. While previous evidence has shown that mobile genetic elements drive the plasticity and evolution of SRB and iron-reducing bacteria (FeRB), few have investigated the shared molecular mechanisms related to EET. To address this, we analyzed the prevalence and abundance of EET elements and how they contributed to their differentiation among 42 members of the Desulfovibrionaceae family and 23 and 59 members of Geobacteraceae and Shewanellaceae, respectively. Proteins involved in EET, such as the cytochromes PpcA and CymA, the outer membrane protein OmpJ, and the iron–sulfur cluster-binding CbcT, exhibited widespread distribution within Desulfovibrionaceae. Some of these showed modular diversification. Additional evidence revealed that horizontal gene transfer was involved in the acquiring and losing of critical genes, increasing the diversification and plasticity between the three families. The results suggest that specific EET genes were widely disseminated through horizontal transfer, where some changes reflected environmental adaptations. These findings enhance our comprehension of the evolution and distribution of proteins involved in EET processes, shedding light on their role in iron and sulfur biogeochemical cycling.

Patient safety culture is relevant both in the delivery of care and in the training of nursing staff, its purpose being to prevent and reduce risks associated with health care. This research aims to evaluate patient safety culture from the perspective of the nursing teams in a highly complex public hospital in the city of Valparaíso, Chile. A cross-sectional study with a quantitative approach applying descriptive, bivariate, and inferential statistical analysis was conducted on 259 nurses and nursing assistants from 13 adult medical–surgical units of the Carlos Van Buren hospital. The participants were obtained through a non-probabilistic convenience sample, answering the hospital survey on Patient Safety Culture version 2.0 (HSOPS 2.0), adapted to the Chilean population. The best-evaluated dimension was communication and receptivity; the worst was the support administrators provide for patient safety. This study identified the weaknesses and strengths of the hospital, the most worrying weakness being the shortage of human capital, material, and financial resources necessary to improve patient safety. This study was not registered.

How similar are the publishing patterns of among Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC countries) in comparison with other countries? This is a question that we addressed by using networks as a tool to analyze the structure of similarities and disparities between countries. We analyzed the number of publications from 2006 to 2015 that are reported by SCImago Journal and Country Rank. With this information, we created a network in order to find the closest countries to BRIC ones, and also to find communities of similar countries favoring data analysis. We found that Brazil, China and Russia are not that close to the core cluster of countries that are more diversified. In opposition, India is closer to a community of countries that are more diverse in terms of publishing patterns. Furthermore, we found that, for different network topologies, Brazil acts as a bridge to connect developing countries and that Russia practices patterns that tend to isolate it from most of the countries.

Mapping Science across countries is a challenging task in the field of Scientometrics. A number of efforts trying to cope with this task has been discussed in the state of the art, addressing this challenge by processing collections of scientific digital libraries and visualizing author-based measures (for instance, the h-index) or document-based measures (for instance, the averaged number of citations per document). A major drawback of these approaches is related to the presence of bias. The bigger the country, the higher the measure value. We explore the use of an econometric index to tackle this limitation, known as the Revealed Comparative Advantage measure (RCA). Using RCA, the diversity and ubiquity of each field of knowledge is mapped across countries. Then, a RCA-based proximity function is explored to visualize citation and h-index ubiquity. Science maps relating 27 knowledge areas and 237 countries are introduced using data crawled from Scimago that ranges from 1996 to 2011. Our results shows that the proposal is feasible and can be extended to ellaborate a global scientific production characterization.