Is the Astronomical Literature Still Expanding Exponentially?

Abstract

Have the recent reductions in funding for astronomy resulted in a significant decrease in the exponential growth of our astronomical publications? I studied the growth of five American and European journals (A&A, AJ, ApJ, MNRAS, and PASP) that publish papers on a broad range of astronomical topics. For each, I counted the numbers of normalized pages and papers published at 10 intervals in 1960–1996. The average numbers of pages showed an exponential increase of 11% per year before the mid‐1970s and 6% per year thereafter. The average number of papers increased exponentially by 9% before the mid‐1970s and by 4% per year thereafter. The difference between these two sets of numbers is caused by an increase in average paper lengths from six normalized pages in 1960 to a constant 12 pages per paper during the last decade. Thus, the average paper lengths have asymptotically reached a constant value. However, there is no sign of a leveling off in the growth of our literature. The number of different authors also increased steadily. Over the past 36 years there have been few systematic shifts from one journal to another, implying that few authors have changed their habitual choices of journals. The numbers of papers in the three American journals has been directly proportional to the numbers of AAS members at 0.41 papers per year per member during the past 36 years. Therefore, the growth in our numbers of papers is entirely due to the growth in the numbers of astronomers, and the additional growth in pages is due to the growth in paper lengths.

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