The number of papers based on data from ING broke the 200 barrier in 1995, at a total of 201. The total in 1996 continued to climb, at 236. There is no evidence as yet for the scientific output from ING levelling off.
The WHT and INT continue to have similar levels of scientific productivity, with 100 and 84 papers respectively in 1996. In the same year, the JKT staged something of a recovery, producing 52 papers.
These publication rates can be compared with those of other UK-funded telescopes. For this comparison we have looked at the number of papers published by each telescope since it was first commissioned.
Of particular interest is the rapid increase of publications from the WHT, INT and AAT in the first 10 years. The older telescopes tend to reach a plateau after about 10 years - note however that there is as yet no evidence for the productivity of the ING telescopes reaching such a plateau.
The scientific impact of these publications can best be measured by using citation studies. We show below the number of papers in the top 100 of the ISI National Science Indicators citation database for each UK-funded ground-based facility. Note that we have grouped papers from the JCMT and UKIRT under the heading "Hawaii" and papers from the AAT and UKST under the heading "AAO". The total of all the UK-funded facilities is indicated by the blue curve.
This citation study clearly demonstrates the huge impact ING publications have recently had on the world of astronomy. Over the last three years the ING has dominated citations from UK ground-based astronomy, in the previous year ING and AAO were level, and before that AAO was dominant.
