U.S.A., France, Soviet Union and Israel. When we recall again that 11 percent of the papers citing these core papers have Israeli authors, we know that we have a focal point of Israeli activity, and this focus broadens to adjacent, and closely allied topics in chaos . In short, it seems that we have here a hot field with significant indigenous strength, which might be an ideal case to foster and stimulate for future economic payoff. Of course, the problem is we have no way of knowing whether there will ever be such practical spin-offs of this basic science endeavor. The beauty of basic science is simply that we can never tell for sure.
Nature is full of surprises.
However, putting a bet on an emerging field where local talent is already at work, seems as sound a basis for investment in basic research as can be devised. This is not to say that all is well with basic science in Israel. In fact, we have reason to believe that it is in decline and in need of increased support and stimulation. Within each period we take all ISI source papers published and cited at least one time in that interval and sum all citations to them from that same time interval. We then divide one by the other to get the mean citations per paper.