Participation of Mexican Civil Society Organizations in scientific publications

We present a bibliometric study, from the perspective of the mode 2 knowledge production, from a transdisciplinary point of view (Gibbons et al. in The new production of knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies, Sage, London, 1994), offering empirical evidence by means of a detailed approach to identify, record and characterize the participation of Mexican Civil Society Organizations (CSO) in scientific articles. Our findings show that this sector has been growing over the past decade along with its participation in the scientific sphere. This shows a differentiated pattern from the habitual patterns of scientific publications by Mexican researchers (ACM in Atlas de la Ciencia Mexicana, http://atlasdelacienciamexicana.org , 2014; Gonzalez-Brambila et al. in PLoS One 11(3):e0151328, 2016; Rodriguez et al. in Investigacion Bibliotecologica 2017:187–219, 2017; Lopez-Olmedo et al. in Scientometrics 112(3):1343–1366, 2017). CSO publications show a greater participation in foreign co-authoring, a broad diversification of the actors involved, a complex framework of relationships, and an overwhelming tendency toward social issues such as healthcare and environment-ecology. Based on our findings, it is concluded that the increment in their participation by them, as secondary effect, is related to the implementation of public policies that encourages the activities carried out by this sector since 2004, even though, its goal was not to encourage specifically the participation of CSO in research processes.