The impact of Spanish astrophysics in the 1990's

Sánchez, S. F.; Benn, C. R.. The impact of Spanish astrophysics in the 1990's. Highlights of Spanish astrophysics II, Proceedings of the 4th Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (SEA), held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, September 11-14, 2000, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001 xxii, 409 p. Edited by Jaime Zamorano, Javier Gorgas, and Jesus Gallego. ISBN 0792369742, p.357. 2001, Vol. , p. -2001.

Spanish astronomy has grown rapidly during the 1990s. The number of papers published per year has doubled, to about 4% of the world total. The number of high-impact papers, however, remains constant at about 1% of the world total. Papers from France, Germany and Italy also have lower impact than their numbers suggest, while for the US, UK, Japan, Netherlands and Australia, the fraction of high-impact papers is approximately the same as the fraction of all papers. We suggest a few possible explanations for this difference.