With increased globalization and international competition among research centers and universities, bibliometrics has regained a new élan. As a matter of fact, it became the most important criterion-- sometimes the only one--used for the evaluation of scientific papers and thereby for the faculty's classification and progression in the academic and research careers. Accreditation procedures and the building of international rankings reinforced this trend as well as the major role played by reference repertoires. This self-feeding and circular process deserves a deeper insight mostly because it generates important knowledge waste. This is so because non-English speaking scientific communities usually face meaningful obstacles to access the above-mentioned repertoires. And accordingly, their scientific papers risk becoming unknown or underutilized, even though they develop matters and topics which are relevant for their author's societies. At the same time, progression in academic or research careers goes in parallel with the reproduction and transmission of official knowledge and generally neglects alternative thinking. In this paper, we shed light on these issues. After a brief literature review, we quantitatively and qualitatively analyze the situation of a Portuguese higher education research institution, with the results confirming the above-mentioned main trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]