Biblioteca Digital

In the present work, an assessment of the Physics research capacity in Chile is presented. For this, the period between 2000 and June 2005 has been studied. In this period almost 200 physicists have contributed to scientific production in terms of ISI publications. Amongst these 200, ~160 correspond to theoretical physicists and only ~40 to experimental physicists; ~178 are men and only ~22 are women. A more detailed analysis shows that ~160 physicists have at least one appearance in ISI publications per year considering the last 3 years. Ten years ago, a similar criteria (at least one appearance per year in ISI articles, considering mobile three-year periods), the number of active physicists in the Chilean community was estimated at 70. Therefore, the Chilean active physicists’ community has doubled in 10 years. There exist 20 centres in which scientific research is developed: 18 university centres, a government institute and a private institute. As regards scientific productivity, both as related to disciplines or research areas, and well as in relation to research centres, it is found that, generally, scientific production, in a particular area in Physics or in a research centre, is directly related to the number of corresponding researchers; that is to say...