OUT OF PARTICLES - IMPACT OF CERN, DESY AND SLAC RESEARCH TO FIELDS OTHER THAN PHYSICS

This paper presents the results of an exploratory bibliometric study a iming at an analysis of basic high energy physics (HEP) research impac t on fields other than physics, and particularly on application-orient ed R&D. After a general discussion of an extensive citation analysis o f basic research publications from three HEP institutes - CERN, DESY, and SLAG - the paper focuses on the 'knowledge flow' from physics to n on-physics, and more specifically the flow from basic physics research to the 'applied world'. At this level, we report journal-as well as r esearch field characteristics, and we identify the most frequently cit ing R&D groups. We conclude that DESY is most cited by the 'applied wo rld', followed by SLAG and CERN. if the number of journals that instit utes have in common - whether based on the source or the citing public ation - is taken as an indicator of the resemblance of their research interests, we found that CERN and SLAG have the closest resemblance, f ollowed by SLAG and DESY, with CERN and DESY having the least in commo n.