Geant4 Silver Anniversary: Science Production with a Simulation System

2023 is the 25th anniversary of Geant4's public release and the 20th anniversary of the publication of its first reference paper (S. Agostinelli et al., Geant4 - a simulation toolkit, NIM A 506 (2003) 250–303), which is the most cited publication in Particle and Fields Physics, Nuclear Science and Technology, and Instruments and Instrumentation journals. This presentation reviews Geant4's lifetime from a scientometric perspective through the analysis of the scientific production it has enabled. The scientometric data, collected from the Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics), are evaluated with rigorous statistical methods; the analysis highlights characteristics as diversity, inequality and trends in the scientific, geographic and institutional distribution of the literature associated with Geant4. The results make up a picture of the evolution of the role of Geant4's use in particle and nuclear physics, astrophysics and medical physics research, and in related fields over the past 25 years. This overview is complemented by some comparative assessment of the role played by other major Monte Carlo particle transport codes.