PATTERNS IN CITATIONS OF PAPERS BY AMERICAN ASTRONOMERS

Numbers for annual citation rates to papers by American Astronomical S ociety prizewinners, officers, and randomly selected members are broug ht up to date. The range is more than three orders of magnitude (from less than or similar 0-5 to 908 citations per year). Many of the corre lations found in 1982 persist, including those with authors' ages, sub disciplines and places of employment. It still pays to be a mature, pr izewinning theorist, working on cosmology or high-energy astrophysics at a prestigious institution. It also still pays to be male, by the sa me nar-row margin as before. Some changes suggest that the astronomica l community is more polarized into 'haves' and 'have nots' than it was 8 years ago. For instance, mature astronomers at prestigious places a re further ahead of average than they were in 1982, While the younger cohorts at teaching- and mission-oriented institutions have slipped fu rther behind. A table presents citation rates as a function of career length, subdiscipline, gender and type of employment for the prizewinn ers, officers and randomly selected members separately, and for most p ossible totals. A number of demographic attributes of the sample, and changes therein, are noted. For instance, stellar astronomers still ou tnumber those studying other kinds of object, but not by as much as th ey used to. Other points concern very highly cited and completely unci ted astronomers, the Associate Members of AAS, women, and the age dist ribution of astronomers employed at the most prestigious places. Reade rs can use these numbers to decide whether particular people, departme nts, etc. are above or below average, but applications to individuals should be made cautiously, because citations are associated only with senior or sole authors of the cited papers. The author remains resolut ely average.