Dose-rate monitoring instruments are indispensable to protect workers from the potential risk of radiation exposure, and are commonly calibrated in terms of the ambient dose equivalent (H*(10)), an operational quantity that is widely used for area monitoring. Plastic scintillation detectors are ideal equipment for dosimetry because of their advantages of low cost and tissue equivalence. However, these detectors are rarely used owing to the characteristics caused by low-atomic-number elements, such as low interaction coefficients and poor gamma-ray spectroscopy. In this study, we calculated the G(E) function to utilize a plastic scintillation detector in spectroscopic dosimetry applications. Numerous spectra with arbitrary energies of gamma rays and their H*(10) were calculated using Monte Carlo simulations and were used to obtain the G(E) function. We acquired three different types of G(E) functions using the least-square and first-order methods. The performances of the G(E) functions were compared with one another, including the conventional total counting method. The performance was evaluated using 133Ba, 137Cs, 152Eu, and 60Co radioisotopes in terms of the mean absolute percentage error between the predicted and true H*(10) values. In addition, we confirmed that the dose-rate prediction errors were within acceptable uncertainty ranges and that the energy responses to 137Cs of the G(E) function satisfied the criteria recommended by the International Commission.

This study presents the characteristics of publications in the Journal of Korean Astronomy Society (JKAS) from 1968 to 2021. JKAS has published 763 research articles over the past 54 years. In addition, 376 proceedings were also published with research articles. There were slight increases and decreases in the number of articles published in JKAS in the 1990s and 2000s, and in 2015 there was the highest recorded number of articles published for a given year. Since then, the number of articles has tended to decrease each year, up to and including the most recent period (2020–2021), which includes the Coronavirus pandemic. However, since theory centered research is primarily conducted without being swayed by society and policies, and that the proportion of authors belonging to educational institutions, such as universities, is high, the future direction of JKAS is encouraging. There are also positive developments including sustained researchers affiliated with international institutions at greater than approximately 23%, as well as improvements in the impact factor. Therefore, it is important to not be deterred by the decreasing trends of the quantitative aspect, but to respond positively by determining a future roadmap.

This paper presents at the characteristics of publications in the Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences from 1984 to 2018. Since its first publication, a total of 1,113 papers (~35 volumes) have been published up to December 2018. While the space astronomy field has made up a large portion of the total number of papers, the number of annually published papers in this field is decreasing. In contrast, the number of papers in the space environment field has been showing an increasing trend since 2013, accounting for more than 30% of the annual publications. The participation rate of foreign researchers has been maintained at greater than 20% since 2012. Despite the decrease in the number of paper per year, there are positive developments including sustained foreign researcher participation at greater than 20% and improvements in the impact factor. We believe that JASS has the potential to enter the distinguished level of international academic journals following a welldeveloped future road map.