A century of scientific publication: towards a theorization of growth behavior and research-orientation

Abstract

This paper attempts to provide an overview of scientific publication trends over the period of a century (1900–2017). It then drills down to three important explorations that depict world trends and the development of science, namely: the growth behaviors of different time periods; fields and research orientations; and cumulative capability patterns of different countries by size of population. To study growth behaviors, we employed logistic growth function to model the world publication trajectory. We observed that the carrying capacity of the world publication trajectory has increased, attaining a much higher level of production. The rate of publication for the period of 1990–2017 has elongated the cycle and witnessed a longer trend towards saturation. For research activities in recent decades, we noted that they were performed by coordinated entities that are endowed to chart a multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary research path. Publications were found to be oriented towards medical and industrial applications, which can be attributed to the attempts of emerging countries which aspire to develop science-based industries. The analyses and observations in this paper have enabled us to corroborate our previous findings on growth behaviors of scientific publications. We believe that these findings will allow us to theorize further on the world development of science, and realize a strong theoretical narrative for a century of publication in the near future.