Out of particles: Impact of CERN, DESY and SLAC research to fields other than physics

This paper presents the results of an exploratory bibliometric study aiming at an analysis of basic high energy physics (HEP) research impact on fields other than physics, and particularly on application-oriented R&D. After a general discussion of an extensive citation analysis of basic research publications from three HEP institutes—CERN, DESY, and SLAC—the paper focuses on the ‘knowledge flow’ from physics to non-physics, and more specifically the flow from basic physics research to the ‘applied world’. At this level, we report journal- as well as research field characteristics, and we identify the most frequently citing R&D groups. We conclude that DESY is most cited by the ‘applied world’, followed by SLAC and CERN. If the number of journals that institutes have in common—whether based on the source or the citing publication—is taken as an indicator of the resemblance of their research interests, we found that CERN and SLAC have the closest resemblance, followed by SLAC and DESY, with CERN and DESY having the least in common.