Who are the actors of the radiochemical researches ?

After the presentation of the fundamental topics which have to be considered in the Radiochemistry field, and the illustration of some topics with our work, it is also interesting to know the scientists who have developed Radiochemistry.
The most objective tool for this research is, as proposed by analysts, the consideration of the citations in the scientific publications. But, since many rapid conclusions were given on this subject, we think necessary to discuss such a method.

The most famous and useful document is the Citation Index. During the years 1970 to 1990 it was considered the citations of the first author of a paper, since in the large majority of the cases, the first author represent the scientist who is the most involved in the considered work. When different authors are considered to have equivalent participation to a research, they are given in the alphabetic order, but this case, which could disturb the citation list, is rare, and the Citation Index data are universally accepted. In these conditions we will obtain a list of researchers with their impact in the scientific literature.

Another possibility is the examination of published books presenting an exhaustive picture of researches devoted to Radiochemistry. Thus, we will select the radiochemists with their impact recognized by the reviewers in the considered field. We have selected three books which are accepted by the scientific community and presenting a very broad panorama of researches in Radiochemistry, with discussion, in each document, of more than thousand of research papers. We note however that with citations given in these books it was often considered the authors whatever the given orders. Since we know that in many cases the participation of authors to a work is very unequal (in some laboratories and countries the signature could essentially signify a power situation) we have to consider all the lists with a particular attention to the Citation Index.

We would like to present four more remarks.

- First, a valid comparison should take into account that some authors are giving in their papers more or less citations of their own works. Moreover, laboratories with large groups of researchers will also give often references of their close colleagues. In these two cases, the reported citations will not contribute to a real impact of the studies in the world community. Therefore, such citations should be withdrawn of the lists, as mentioned, although they correspond in some cases to the majority of the cited literature.
- Secondly, it was argued, generally to discard the comparative method of scientific works, that erroneous results could be cited by contradictors and interfere with positive data. But, in these cases, the examinations of different reference books will allow to establish a definitive conclusion.
- Thirdly, comparisons of research citations will of course depend on the size of the scientific community. In some extend the probability of citation of a document is correlated with the number of scientists involved in the considered field. For this reason, comparison of research work belonging to different communities is poor. Consequently, we should consider papers from the same scientific domain.
- Fourthly, we have also to consider for what kind of reason papers are cited. It could be technical procedure, measurement of an ordinary constant, or in the opposite, discovery of fundamental mechanism or property.

Finally, if citations are useful to compare, we have to be cautious and take care of the preceding remarks. Such considerations show that some uncertainty has to be accepted. It is clear that such citation analysis cannot be made by simple computing. It needs a deep knowledge of the considered field and consideration of the different possibility of errors we have mentioned. It is necessary to have a detailed picture of a scientific field. Nevertheless, for rough considerations, Nobel prime will naturally accumulate quantity of citations and weak discoverers will collect extremely few citations!

The three reference books we will consider are:

- The Chemistry of the actinide and transactinide elements, Edited by L.R. Morss, N.M. Edelstein and J. Fuger, Springer, 2006, This is the most complete and recent edition which contain the citations of about 12000 authors,
- Fundamentals of Radiochemistry, J.P. Adloff, R. Guillaumont, CRC Press, 1993,
- Handbook on the Physics and Chemistry of Rare Earths, Vol. 18, Lanthanides /Actinides: Chemistry, (1994).

As additional information concerning the French academic organization of science, we would like to mention that different researches of scientists are examined each year by the "Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique" inside of Committees (forty exists for each domain of the scientific research). Each of them contain about twenty scientists who are either elected by the college of researchers belonging to the scientific Section or designed by administrative or politic organizations. For more than 25 years Radiochemistry and Radiochemists have only one designed representative in these Committees. They had consequently a major role in the decisions and were successively, for 4 or 8 years: