Scaling rules in the science system: Influence of field-specific citation characteristics on the impact of individual researchers

The representation of science as a citation density landscape and the study of scaling rules with the field-specific citation density as a main topological property was previously analyzed at the level of research groups. Here, the focus is on the individual researcher. In this new analysis, the size dependence of several main bibliometric indicators for a large set of individual researchers is explored. Similar results as those previously observed for research groups are described for individual researchers. The total number of citations received by scientists increases in a cumulatively advantageous way as a function of size (in terms of number of publications) for researchers in three areas: Natural Resources, Biology & Biomedicine, and Materials Science. This effect is stronger for researchers in low citation density fields. Differences found among thematic areas with different citation densities are discussed.