Article 50 million: an estimate of the number of scholarly articles in existence

2010/07/01 by Arif E. JINHA, Arif E. Jinha · 14 citations
Decision Sciences · #scientometrics and bibliometrics research

paper · pdf · doi:10.1087/20100308

openalex publication_date 2010/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

ABSTRACT How many scholarly research articles are there in existence? Journal articles first appeared in 1665, and the cumulative total is estimated here to have passed 50 million in 2009. This sum was arrived at based on published figures for global annual output for 2006, and analyses of annual output and growth rates published in the last decade.

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