The bioethics research conducted in Ibero-American countries has been very much restricted to its own realm.

The aim of this study was to perform a bibliometric evaluation of bioethics papers by authors affiliated with Ibero-American institutions, and to determine how their work influences global bioethics literature.

We performed a literature search in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS CC) and Scopus.

We identified a total of 5,975 documents, of which 84.3% were articles, 11.6% reviews and 4.1% book chapters. The median number of citations per paper was higher in English-language journals.

Only 10 articles published between 2010 and 2019 in peer-reviewed bioethics journals and produced exclusively by authors from Ibero-American institutions garnered more than 15 citations.

Our study suggests that if researchers from Ibero-American institutions want to influence global bioethical thinking, they must make the required leap in quality to be able to publish in high-quality bioethics and mainstream journals.