THE ASTRONOMICAL COMMUNITY IN THE NETHERLANDS

A list has been compiled essentially for all scientific staff at Netherlands astronomical institutes with their first author citations in the period 1986 to 1992. In addition, for each person for the year 1992 the number of cited publications has been compiled, their earliest, most frequently and most recently cited paper. Various conclusions can be drawn from this: (I) the earliest cited paper usually is from near the year of the PhD, (2) the most recently cited (first author) paper is usually less than 5 years old, (3) a personal high citation rate is generally a result of a reasonable number of citations to most of one's papers rather than the result of a single, highly cited paper and (4) Netherlands astronomy is most visible in observational studies, especially concerning stars, interstellar medium and our own and other galaxies and using in particular UV, IR and optical facilities. Comparison in mean citation rates determined in other studies are also made, resulting in an excellent score for the Netherlands astronomical community.