Context and Characteristics of Software Related to Ecuadorian Scientific Production: A Bibliometric and Content Analysis Study

In view of the predominance of Information Technologies in different contexts, it is known that the use of software and data in the field of scientific research has increased; however, it is not possible to clearly determine the environment and the use given to them. The present study proposes a bibliometric and content analysis of publications with Ecuadorian affiliation, which allows us to recognize the characteristics and context of the use of software as a work tool. The study was developed in four stages: selection of documents, bibliometric analysis, network analysis and content analysis. A total of 4028 documents were extracted from the WoS and Scopus databases, analyzing 117 at the content level. Among the main tools used were R Studio, VOSviewer and QualCoder. Among the institutions generating this production are the Universidad Politécnica ESPOL, the Universidad Politécnica Salesiana and the Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE. There is a high rate of collaboration with Spanish authors. Finally, the studies are strongly oriented towards “Professional, scientific and technical activities”, are of the “Experimental” type, and have mainly referred specifically to proprietary software.