Natalie Khalil

Global scientific publication output experienced an exponential increase between 2000 and 2025.

Total DOI-indexed articles rose from 1,508,675 in 2000 to 7,233,887 in 2025, representing a 4.8-fold increase (+379.5% cumulative growth) with a fitted exponential rate of 6.4% per year.

OpenAlex data validates prior proprietary bibliometric findings on scientific article growth between 2016 and 2022.

Using OpenAlex, researchers found 48.1% cumulative growth (from 3.85M to 5.70M articles) and a fitted exponential rate of 6.9%/yr from 2016 to 2022, aligning closely with Hanson et al.'s prior Scopus-based finding of 47% cumulative growth.

China surpassed the United States in absolute publication output and global share in 2022.

In 2022, China produced 891,175 articles (15.6% global share) compared to the US's 794,008 articles (13.9%). By 2025, China produced 1.18M articles (16.3%) versus the US's 947K (13.1%).

The arithmetic mean of the example dataset values 2, 3, and 4 is 3.

Calculated by summing all values in the dataset to get 9 and dividing by the sample size of 3, resulting in 3.

The year-over-year growth rate of scientific publication volume has accelerated since 2022.

The mean year-over-year growth rate rose from 6.8% (2016–2022) to 8.3% (2022–2025), with 2025 reaching +11.9%, the highest single-year growth rate in the DOI-indexed record since 2002.

Social Sciences grew at the fastest rate among all academic domains between 2015 and 2025, while Physical Sciences added the most articles in absolute terms.

Social Sciences grew by +139.3% (from 839K to 2.01M articles), whereas Physical Sciences added 1,363,414 articles (growing by +96.4% from 1.41M to 2.78M).

The fastest-growing national publishing systems over the 2015–2025 decade are predominantly located in the Global South.

Countries with a minimum of 10K articles in 2015 showing the highest growth rates include Indonesia (+1246%), Pakistan (+433%), Saudi Arabia (+295%), Nigeria (+258%), and China (+221%).