Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010 Sep;84(3):575-603.
doi: 10.1007/s11192-010-0202-z. Epub 2010 Mar 10.

The rate of growth in scientific publication and the decline in coverage provided by Science Citation Index

Peder Olesen Larsen, Markus von Ins

The rate of growth in scientific publication and the decline in coverage provided by Science Citation Index

Peder Olesen Larsen et al. Scientometrics. 2010 Sep.

Abstract

The growth rate of scientific publication has been studied from 1907 to 2007 using available data from a number of literature databases, including Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). Traditional scientific publishing, that is publication in peer-reviewed journals, is still increasing although there are big differences between fields. There are no indications that the growth rate has decreased in the last 50 years. At the same time publication using new channels, for example conference proceedings, open archives and home pages, is growing fast. The growth rate for SCI up to 2007 is smaller than for comparable databases. This means that SCI was covering a decreasing part of the traditional scientific literature. There are also clear indications that the coverage by SCI is especially low in some of the scientific areas with the highest growth rate, including computer science and engineering sciences. The role of conference proceedings, open access archives and publications published on the net is increasing, especially in scientific fields with high growth rates, but this has only partially been reflected in the databases. The new publication channels challenge the use of the big databases in measurements of scientific productivity or output and of the growth rate of science. Because of the declining coverage and this challenge it is problematic that SCI has been used and is used as the dominant source for science indicators based on publication and citation numbers. The limited data available for social sciences show that the growth rate in SSCI was remarkably low and indicate that the coverage by SSCI was declining over time. National Science Indicators from Thomson Reuters is based solely on SCI, SSCI and Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI). Therefore the declining coverage of the citation databases problematizes the use of this source.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Cumulative number of abstracts in various scientific fields, from the beginning of the abstract service to given data [1960]. From Little Science, Big Science, by Derek J. de Solla Price. Columbia Paperback Edition 1965. Copyright © 1963 Columbia University Press. Reprinted with permission of the publisher
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Cumulative number of records for nine databases 1907–2007 (semi logarithmic scale)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Number of records for nine databases 1907–2007 (semi logarithmic scale)
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Number of records for twelve databases 1970–2007 (semi logarithmic scale)
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Number of records for journal articles for nine databases 1980–2007 (semi logarithmic scale)
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Number of records for conference proceedings for nine databases 1980–2007 (semi logarithmic scale)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Archambault, É., Gagné, É.-T., Côté, G., Larivière, V., & Gingras, Y. (2005). Welcome to the linguistic warp zone: Benchmarking scientific output in the social sciences and humanities. In P. Ingwersen & B. Larsen, (Eds.), Proceedings of the ISSI 2005 Conference, Stockholm, July 24–28 (Vol. 1, pp. 149–158).
    1. Bar-Ilan J. Which h-index?—a comparison of WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar. Scientometrics. 2008;74:257–271. doi: 10.1007/s11192-008-0216-y. - DOI
    1. Bar-Ilan, J. (2009). Web of Science with the conference proceedings citation indexes—the case of computer science. In B. Larsen & J. Leta (Eds.), Proceedings of ISSI 2009—the 12th international conference of the international society for scientometrics and informetrics, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Vol 1, pp. 399–409). Published by BIREME/PAHO/WHO and Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, 2009. ISSN 2175-1935.
    1. Björk, B.-C., Roos, A., & Lauro, M. (2008). Global annual volume of peer reviewed scholarly articles and the share available via Open Access options. Proceedings ELPUB2008 Conference on Electronic Publishing. Toronto, Canada, June 2008, pp. 1–10. Retrieved December 9, 2008 from http://elpub.scix.net.
    1. Bradford SC. Documentation, Washington DC, Public Affairs Office. See: Bradford, S.C. (1953) Documentation, London: Crosby Lockwood & Sons; 1950.

LinkOut - more resources