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 sch...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2016-06, Vol.11 (6), p.e0156983-e0156983
Main Authors: Cordero, Radames J B, de León-Rodriguez, Carlos M, Alvarado-Torres, John K, Rodriguez, Ana R, Casadevall, Arturo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Authorship
Biochemistry
Biological evolution
Biological Science Disciplines - trends
Biology and Life Sciences
Communication
Density
Humans
Immunology
Life sciences
Medicine
Medicine and Health Sciences
Peer review
People and Places
Physical Sciences
Professional misconduct
Public health
Publications - trends
Publishing
Publishing - trends
Quantitative analysis
Research - trends
Research and Analysis Methods
Science - trends
Scientometrics
Trends
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0156983