Functional differentiation and technological specialization in a speciality in high energy physics: the case of weak interactions of elementary particles

Bibliometric techniques were used to create the data base. Nuclear Science Abstracts were scanned for the years 1950 to 1972 inclusive and identified all abstracts of serial publications which pertained to weak interactions. The abstracted articles were classified as either theory or experiment and further classified them according to a subject area typology that developed. It was then determined whether the abstracted theoretical articles were either phenomenology or general theory. Experimental articles were classified according to the technologies employed in the reported experiments. Additional coded data include the authors of the articles and their self-reported attributed locations and the year in which the articles were published. From these data four basic files were created: an article file containing information about each article; an author file containing information about the articles he/she authored or coauthored and his/her location through time; an institution file and a nation file each containing information about the articles published by scientists employed by these institutions or residing in these nations