Growth rates of modern science: A bibliometric analysis based on the number of publications and cited references

Many studies (in information science) have looked at the growth of science. In this study, we reexamine the question of the growth of science. To do this we (a) use current data up to publication year 2012 and (b) analyze the data across all disciplines and also separately for the natural sciences and for the medical and health sciences. Furthermore, the data were analyzed with an advanced statistical technique—segmented regression analysis—which can identify specific segments with similar growth rates in the history of science. The study is based on two different sets of bibliometric data: (a) the number of publications held as source items in the Web of Science ( WoS , T homson R euters) per publication year…