THE ASTRONOMICAL COMMUNITY IN THE NETHERLANDS

A list has been compiled essentially for all scientific staff at Nethe rlands astronomical institutes with their first author citations in th e period 1986 to 1992. In addition, for each person for the year 1992 the number of cited publications has been compiled, their earliest, mo st frequently and most recently cited paper. Various conclusions can b e drawn from this: (I) the earliest cited paper usually is from near t he year of the PhD, (2) the most recently cited (first author) paper i s 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, espe cially concerning stars, interstellar medium and our own and other gal axies and using in particular UV, IR and optical facilities. Compariso n in mean citation rates determined in other studies are also made, re sulting in an excellent score for the Netherlands astronomical communi ty.