2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/1891Spanish astronomy has grown rapidly during the 1990s. The number of papers published per year has doubled, to about 4% of the world total. The number of high-impact papers, however, remains constant at about 1% of the world total. Papers from France, Germany and Italy also have lower impact than their numbers suggest, while for the US, UK, Japan, Netherlands and Australia, the fraction of high-impact papers is approximately the same as the fraction of all papers. We suggest a few possible explanations for this difference.4 pages, 2 figures, proceedings of the IV scientific meeting of the Sociedad Española de Astronoia (SEA)Astrophysicstext