International cooperation networks of the BRICS bloc

Since the BRICS Declaration in Cape Town in 2013, its five member countries have committed to cooperation programs in science, technology and innovation (STI), based on the five strategic thematic areas assigned to each signatory: climate change and mitigation of catastrophes (Brazil); water resources and pollution treatment (Russia); geospatial technology and its applications (India); new and renewable energy, and energy efficiency (China); and astronomy (South Africa). Five years after the Declaration and almost a decade after the First BRICS Summit, the evaluation of the strengthening of international cooperation among countries remains a challenge, due to their low presence in the large index databases commonly used for the collection of scientific data, such as Web of Science and Scopus. The proposal of this research is to carry out a study on international cooperation among the countries in the last five years through the Dimensions platform, based on the incidence of international co-authoring and co-financing of research agencies from the five countries, seeking to highlight the following points: the networks that consolidate themselves from the international cooperation among the BRICS countries, areas emerging in research with incidences of co-authorship, and how the research networks have been developed around the five strategic areas defined in the BRICS Cape Town Declaration. It aims to evaluate how the international cooperation of the BRICS bloc in strategic thematic areas has been growing, pointing to possible areas of strengthening of international partnerships that can be deployed through this study.