Research publishing: a 25-year view using Dimensions



Hello fellow journalologists,

The volume of published research articles has grown rapidly over the past 25 years. I’ve been investigating what might have caused the increase and today I want to share my findings with you, in the form of a video.

The video is split into two halves.

The first section (22 minutes viewing time) talks you through the impact on article volumes of (1) Covid, (2) the rise of China, (3) the transition to open access, and (4) the possible effect of paper mills. I also show which subject areas grew the most over the past decade.

The second section (14 minutes viewing time) explains how I used Dimensions (Digital Science) to do the analysis.

Dimensions kindly sponsored this video, but I had full editorial control over the presentation. I’d like to thank Eric Schares, a librarian at Iowa State University, for providing invaluable feedback on an early version of these slides. Needless to say, any errors are my own.

Click the play button below to watch the video on the Digital Science YouTube channel.

video preview

I hope you find the video to be useful and interesting. Please leave a comment on YouTube if you have any questions about the data that I present here or about how I used Dimensions to create the graphs.

Until next time,

James

113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205
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