How to Describe the Life’s Work of a Scientist? The Œuvre of Christian Schlögl as an Example

This article attempts to present the entire research output of a scientist in terms of his publication activity and its impact as comprehensively as possible. To this end, a bibliometric overview of the scope and structure of his research output is first provided. Furthermore, the visibility of this output in the various information services is analyzed. Christian Schlögl authored a total of 177 publications, including 77 journal articles. This set of publications is only visible through the use of personal publication lists in an institutional repository (Uni Graz Online). In contrast, only a fraction of these publications are included in the common information services; in the Web of Science, for example, not even a third exist. The publication output is then examined in more detail, including preferred topics, co-authors, and journals. Next, a citation analysis is conducted, revealing, for example, the temporal distribution of citations and the most frequently cited publications. Finally, the seven most important research areas are briefly presented. For each of these areas, a co-author was asked to comment on Christian Schlögl’s working methods and collaboration. Overall, this article could serve as a good illustrative example for analyzing the research performance of an individual researcher.