Scientific capabilities of a high-tech industry: The case of the Spanish pharmaceutical sector

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence ; The purpose of this thesis is to provide an exhaustive map of Spanish pharmaceutical companies publishing in terms of the proportion and growth of publishing over time, publications impact (citations), and companies’ collaboration with academic institutions (co-authorship). Using Web of Science (WoS) database, the scope of analysis was delimited to scientific publications by pharmaceutical companies headquartered in Spain without limiting a time range. The premise that leads to this investigation is that the Spanish pharmaceutical industry is in the top 10 worldwide in terms of market share with 26.3 billion dollars in sales in 2020, ranking in eighth position. The sector invests highly in R&D and almost 20% of the total industrial R&D in Spain is developed by the pharmaceutical industry. We were able to define some patterns of publication among the 8 Spanish companies considered. Out of the 2,739 publications, PharmaMar is, by far, the company which has published the most (38%), followed by Almirall (35%). Most of the collaborations were with national universities and the majority of the most productive and influential authors were also affiliated to PharmaMar. In what concerns to quantity and quality, the total publication growth between 1974-2012, the continued citation growth until 2021, the noticeable quantity of the publications by PharmaMar and the consequent of their citation impact should be highlighted.