References on Mexican Mammals: Origin and Impact

Resumen

Several works address the accumulated knowledge on Mexican mammals and document with a high degree of certainty the history and current status of mammalogy in Mexico. Given the amount of information gathered to date, our interest focused on quantifying and analyzing the literature references that support such knowledge. We used the literature that we have gathered over more than 40 years. This was analyzed by building a database that includes all the references related to any aspect of the study of the Mexican mammals. This comprised the period between 1648 to the end of 2016. Of the 6,732 references reviewed, 5,467 (81 %) were published in 702 journals from 45 countries. Eighty seven percent of the journals are from only 11 countries, and the remaining 13 % comes from other 34 countries. Articles are concentrated in a few magazines; 61.5 % were published in just 27 journals, and the remaining 38.5 % are scattered in 675. The Impact Factor (IF) of journals publishing on Mexican mammals is higher than the average for other branches of Zoology, although most works are published in journals with an IF below 0.5. We reviewed the origin, evolution and extinction of the most important journals; in addition, the relevant personalities in the study of Mexican mammalogy are highlighted. The number of articles and journals increase with time, but the trend was not constant. World Wars I and II are factors that negatively impacted academic production; on the contrary, post-war periods of strong economic and academic growth led to methodological, conceptual and technological advances that fostered growth. Journals are published under the auspices of scientific societies, universities, museums of natural history, research centers, and a small number are private; among them all, scientific societies have contributed overwhelmingly to the knowledge of the mammals of Mexico. Mexican mammalogy is a discipline undergoing a rapid expansion, with a higher number of works being published, a widening scope, and knowledge is disseminated through a greater variety of journals, most of them well established and of broad circulation. However, the current conditions of our institutions where mammal research is undertaken, the lack of opportunities to incorporate young researchers, and the limited financial and material resources, prevent to foresee a promising future.