The Brazilian academic genealogy: evidence of advisor–advisee relationships through quantitative analysis

Science can be examined from several standpoints, such as through a bibliometric analysis of the scientific output of researchers, research groups or institutions. However, there is little information about the advisor–advisee relationships or the academic supervision of researchers or between teachers and students. In this paper, we examine the results of the academic genealogy of PhD and Master’s students working in Brazil, which was obtained from 737,919 curriculum vitae extracted from the Lattes Platform. Our findings bring to light three main sources of evidence related to the Brazilian academic genealogy: (1) the degree of interdisciplinarity between main areas of knowledge, (2) the structural features and evolving patterns with regard to both areas of knowledge and researchers, and (3) the patterns in the levels of training that affect the topological metrics. We conclude that academic genealogy offers a great opportunity to assess researchers and their areas of research from the perspective of human resource training.