Scaling rules in the science system: influence of field-specific citation characteristics on the impact of individual researchers

TL;DR

This paper investigates how field-specific citation characteristics influence the impact metrics of individual researchers, revealing consistent scaling rules across different levels of scientific analysis.

Contribution

It extends previous research from research groups to individual researchers, demonstrating the prevalence of scaling rules in citation landscapes at the individual level.

Findings

Scaling rules are consistent for individual researchers.

Citation-density varies across thematic areas.

Bibliometric indicators depend on researcher size.

Abstract

The representation of science as a citation-density landscape and the study of scaling rules with the field-specific citation-density as a main topological property was previously analysed at the level of research groups. Here the focus is on the individual researcher. In this new analysis, the size-dependence of several main bibliometric indicators for a large set of individual researchers is explored. Similar results as those previously observed for research groups are here described for individual researchers, reinforcing the idea of prevalent scaling rules in the representation of science as a citation-density landscape. Differences among thematic areas with different citation densities are discussed.