Characteristics of the Spanish Neutron User Community Explored through a Bibliometric Study

Abstract

Scientific research using neutron scattering techniques began relatively recently in Spain. In the 1970s, Spanish scientists undertook their first neutron-scattering experiments: Initially, the topics related to materials science and/or magnetism were of interest, and only few researchers belonging to two or three different groups were involved in them. However, over the last 20 years, the number of researchers and research groups has grown significantly, as well as the scientific disciplines to which they belong, i.e. physics, chemistry, engineering, geology, biology, medicine and even archaeometry or cultural heritage). In figure 1 the eleven most active disciplines are shown, the area of the circles being proportional to the number of articles. The vertical axis represents the ratio between the average impact factor of “neutron” articles and the total Spanish articles in each discipline, while the horizontal one shows the ratio between the average numbers of citations.