Equating research production in different scientific fields

摘要

Diffusion in a scientific field is regarded as the dissemination of knowledge, channeled through citations that are distributed over different periods of time and propagated by means of scientific journals. Here it is considered to be a latent variable defined by a particular set of items (the citations made in different fields) and the Quantum Measurement technique is used as an instrument for measuring that variable on an objective scale. The different scientific fields thereby equiparated according to their diffusion. The citations generated by articles belonging to these fields were collected from the SCI/SSCI JCR of ISI (Science Citation Index/Social Science Citation Index Journal Citation Reports of Institute for Scientific Information). The final result is an equivalence table of citations between the areas of research.