We examined if collaboration, scientific leadership, and expert knowledge predict citation using WoS-extracted data from Andean country universities. We analyzed data for the last six years (2018-2022) for the three main WoS indexes: SCIE, SSCI, and AHCI. Given the over-dispersion of the predicted variable, we worked with a negative binomial regression and found that scientific leadership is a primary citation predictor, followed by collaboration. Scientific leadership is a relevant issue if research teams from Andean countries plan to have some control over research agenda-setting and provide significant contributions to knowledge diffusion and expansion.