  Understanding the dynamics of research production and collaboration may
reveal better strategies for scientific careers, academic institutions and
funding agencies. Here we propose the use of a large and multidisciplinar
database of scientific curricula in Brazil, namely, the Lattes Platform, to
study patterns of scientific production and collaboration. In this database,
detailed information about publications and researchers are made available by
themselves so that coauthorship is unambiguous and individuals can be evaluated
by scientific productivity, geographical location and field of expertise. Our
results show that the collaboration network is growing exponentially for the
last three decades, with a distribution of number of collaborators per
researcher that approaches a power-law as the network gets older. Moreover,
both the distributions of number of collaborators and production per researcher
obey power-law behaviors, regardless of the geographical location or field,
suggesting that the same universal mechanism might be responsible for network
growth and productivity.We also show that the collaboration network under
investigation displays a typical assortative mixing behavior, where teeming
researchers (i.e., with high degree) tend to collaborate with others alike.
Finally, our analysis reveals that the distinctive collaboration profile of
researchers awarded with governmental scholarships suggests a strong bonus
impact on their productivity.
