ANALYSIS OF THE RESEARCH TRAJECTORY OF ECUADORIAN JURISTS THROUGH THE DISTRIBUTION OF CITATIONS 2000-2022

Objective Citation analysis is a common practice to evaluate scientific activity and publications. It has great importance in the informational environment based on specifying the author's objectives in the results of the investigative process. As part of information metric studies, citation analyses, as well as their quantitative distribution in scientific literature, allow us to examine their evolution over time. Thus, citation indicators are considered the most appropriate to gauge the academic impact of scientific production. Methodology : The h -index was used and various databases were evaluated to locate journals and articles related to Legal Sciences in Ecuador, including Google Scholar, GSM, SJR and DOAJ. Results : In recent years, a gradual increase has been observed in the number of investigations carried out on the investigative career of Ecuadorian jurists from 2000 to 2022. The chronological evolution of each of the research topics analyzed shows that the increasing trend has a significant rebound in the distribution of citations in the analyzed articles. Conclusions: The references of scientific works offer recognition of the importance or influence that the cited work exerted on the author's own work. The use of systems and databases such as Scopus, Scimago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) and Web of Science provide reliability in the data obtained to identify impact journals in Ecuador and are assumed as tools to identify their indexing and impact.