Egon Willighagen

if I look at journals articles and the amount of research they describe, it feels to me that journal article describe more research than in the past.

Does someone know of a study that looked if this hypothesis is true? #publishing #research #academicchatter

May 1, 2024 at 7:45amWeb
Show threadJohannesMay 1, 2024
@egonw
For biomedical research that rings true. I like reading old research (from my field), so this is anecdotally: a lot of work prior to 1920 is often the description of one, if very detailed, observation, by 1960 you may have 3-4 sets of experiments, then by 1990 you get 3-4 figures with a few experiments each and in the last decades it has ballooned to dozens of experiments. Looking at Nature or Science, as they have a long record, you’ll see how the number of figures increases over time.
Show threadJohannesMay 1, 2024
@egonw
I also often find work written prior to 1980 easier to parse, even though the writing would be considered meandering and verbose by today’s standards. Older work often has a description-speculation structure that reads to me like taking a guided tour through the experiments and listening to an experts musings. The currently prevalent rush through dozens of experiments to “support” an overarching narrative seems less fun - like a sales pitch where there is no room for uncertainty.
Show threadDan GoodmanMay 1, 2024
@egonw it's going to be hard to define in a satisfactory way. Also I have the feeling in older papers there's a lot of unreported work in the sense that since they had less pressure to publish they only report the best stuff.
Show threadTatjana SchefflerMay 1, 2024
@egonw I would expect the opposite. Today, the "minimal publishable unit" has become a thing. Reading experimental papers from the 80s, they often report on 4 or more different, very elaborate experiments.
Show threadAna ViñuelaMay 1, 2024

@egonw I remember seeing something about figures density a while ago, but can't find it. But I found these papers on increase in density of papers:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0156983

But also increase in citations per paper... May be a proxy:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8345841/

Life Science’s Average Publishable Unit (APU) Has Increased over the Past Two Decades

Quantitative analysis of the scientific literature is important for evaluating the evolution and state of science. To study how the density of biological literature has changed over the past two decades we visually inspected 1464 research articles related only to the biological sciences from ten scholarly journals (with average Impact Factors, IF, ranging from 3.8 to 32.1). By scoring the number of data items (tables and figures), density of composite figures (labeled panels per figure or PPF), as well as the number of authors, pages and references per research publication we calculated an Average Publishable Unit or APU for 1993, 2003, and 2013. The data show an overall increase in the average ± SD number of data items from 1993 to 2013 of approximately 7±3 to 14±11 and PPF ratio of 2±1 to 4±2 per article, suggesting that the APU has doubled in size over the past two decades. As expected, the increase in data items per article is mainly in the form of supplemental material, constituting 0 to 80% of the data items per publication in 2013, depending on the journal. The changes in the average number of pages (approx. 8±3 to 10±3), references (approx. 44±18 to 56±24) and authors (approx. 5±3 to 8±9) per article are also presented and discussed. The average number of data items, figure density and authors per publication are correlated with the journal’s average IF. The increasing APU size over time is important when considering the value of research articles for life scientists and publishers, as well as, the implications of these increasing trends in the mechanisms and economics of scientific communication.

Show threadChristian MeestersMay 1, 2024

@egonw

Doubtful:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/leap.1406
- https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2310.06712
- https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.15884 - https://fediscience.org/@MarkHanson/111147239095599059

These are just data points, no strict falsification of your hypothesis. Yet, you certainly remember the sticker "Science without open is just anecdote" from #osr24nl, right? There IS lots of solid research and more than in the past (we have more and bigger institutions after all). There is a lot of noise (fake, fraud, empty papers), too. As for the ratio over time: 🤷‍♂️