Growth in the number of references in engineering journal papers during the 1972-2013 period

TL;DR

This study analyzes four decades of engineering journal papers, revealing a significant increase in references per paper from 8 in 1972 to 25 in 2013, with accelerated growth after 2000 due to easier access to digital resources.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive longitudinal analysis of reference counts in engineering journals, highlighting the impact of internet accessibility on scholarly referencing behavior.

Findings

References per paper increased from 8 to 25 between 1972 and 2013.

Growth rate accelerated around the year 2000.

Data set includes over 70,000 references from eight journals.

Abstract

The number of references per paper, perhaps the best single index of a journal's scholarliness, has been studied in different disciplines and periods. In this paper we present a four decade study of eight engineering journals. A data set of over 70000 references was generated after automatic data gathering and manual inspection for errors. Results show a significant increase in the number of references per paper, the average rises from 8 in 1972 to 25 in 2013. This growth presents an acceleration around the year 2000, consistent with a much easier access to search engines and documents produced by the generalization of the Internet.