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Title:
Productivity and Impact of Radio Telescopes
Authors:
Trimble, Virginia; Zaich, Paul
Affiliation:
AA(Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, 4129 Frederick Reimes Hall, Irvine, CA 92697-4575 and Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope, Goleta, California.), AB(5901 Sierra Bravo Road, Irvine, CA 92612.; Current address: P.O. Box 13844, Stanford, CA 94309.)
Publication:
The Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Volume 118, Issue 844, pp. 933-938. (PASP Homepage)
Publication Date:
06/2006
Origin:
UCP
PASP Keywords:
Telescopes, Sociology of Astronomy
Abstract Copyright:
(c) 2006: The Astronomical Society of the Pacific
DOI:
10.1086/505182
Bibliographic Code:
2006PASP..118..933T

Abstract

In 2001, 836 papers appearing in 15 journals reported and/or analyzed data collected with ground-based radio, millimeter, and submillimeter telescopes, plus the HALCA, COBE, and SWAS satellites and a few balloon-borne detectors. More than 80 telescopes were represented, including 36 that were each responsible for five or more papers. These papers were cited 11,332 times in 2002, 2003, and 2004, for a mean rate of 13.56 citations per paper, or 4.52 citations per paper per year (sometimes called impact or impact factor, and compared to 5.40 citations per paper per year for optical astronomy papers in the same period and 6.42 for space-based papers). We examine here the distributions of papers, citations, and impact factors among subject areas and telescopes and make some comparisons with the 2100 optical and infrared and 1200 space-based papers published and cited in the same years. The single largest item in the optical inventory was, naturally, the Hubble Space Telescope, with 16% of the papers and 19% of the citations. Radio astronomy houses an even more dominant entity, the Very Large Array (VLA), responsible for 22% of the papers and 27% of the citations. The VLA is, therefore, proportionately even more influential in world radio astronomy than HST is in world optical astronomy. A third paper in this series looks at papers and citations in the area of infrared, X-ray, and gamma-ray space-based astronomy and planetary missions. Of the ``radio'' papers, 149 were also optical papers and 76 were also ``space'' papers, in the sense of reporting or analyzing data in both bands. Their impact factors were 5.71 and 7.51 citations per paper per year, respectively, slightly above the averages for the individual bands. Thus, slightly more than half of observational astronomy is still optical astronomy, but multiwavelength papers are somewhat more influential than average. No radio+optical paper went completely uncited during the triennium.
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