Annual articles published in scientific and technical journals

Article counts refer to publications from a selection of conference proceedings and peer-reviewed journals from Scopus in science and engineering fields, according to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics Taxonomy of Disciplines.

Aggregation method:

Gap-filled total

Statistical concept and methodology:

Methodology: The Science and Engineering Indicators 2024 report “Publications Output: U.S. Trends and International Comparisons” uses a large database of publication records as a source of bibliometric data. Bibliometric data include each article’s title, author(s), authors’ institution(s), references, journal title, unique article-identifying information (journal volume, issue, and page numbers or digital object identifier), and year or date of publication. The PBS report uses Scopus, a bibliometric database owned by Elsevier and containing scientific literature with English titles and abstracts, to examine national and global scientific publication–related activity.?

Article counts refer to publications from a selection of conference proceedings and peer-reviewed journals in science and engineering fields from Scopus, according to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics Taxonomy of Disciplines: agricultural sciences, astronomy and astrophysics, biological and biomedical sciences, chemistry, computer and information sciences; engineering; geosciences, atmospheric sciences, and ocean sciences; health sciences; material sciences; mathematics and statistics; natural resources and conservation; physics; psychology; social sciences.

Statistical concept(s): The number of journal articles is presented using fractional counting: a method of counting science and engineering publications in which credit for coauthored publications is divided among the collaborating institutions or regions, countries, or economies based on the proportion of their participating authors. Fractional counting allocates the publication count based on the proportion of the coauthors named on the article with institutional addresses from each region, country, or economy. Fractional counting enables the counts to sum up to the number of total articles. (Source: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb202333/glossary)

Development relevance:

A scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. Most journals are highly specialized, although some of the oldest journals such as Nature publish articles and scientific papers across a wide range of scientific fields. Scientific journals contain articles that have been peer reviewed. When a scientific journal describes experiments or calculations, they must supply enough details that an independent researcher could repeat the experiment or calculation to verify the results. Each such journal article becomes part of the permanent scientific record.

Some journals, such as Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), and Physical Review Letters, have a reputation of publishing articles that mark a fundamental breakthrough in their respective fields.

Limitations and exceptions:

Because the bibliometric database is constantly updated, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) does not recommend comparing bibliometric data across different editions of the Science and Engineering Indicators publication. For each edition of Indicators, NCSES uses a fixed snapshot of the database. This means that although trends are comparable, the exact number of articles, citations, and other data will vary across editions. For more information about comparing fixed versus dynamic journal data sets, see Schneider et al. (2019). Data before 2003 is sourced from earlier editions of the Science and Engineering Indicators report and may not be strictly comparable with 2003-2022 data.

The Scopus database is constructed from articles and conference proceedings with an English-language title and abstract; therefore, the database contains an unmeasurable bias because not all science and engineering (S&E) articles and conference proceedings meet the English language requirement (Elsevier 2020). (Source: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb202333/technical-appendix)