Physics Letters B publications from 1967 to 2020. An analysis of the WEB page content of PLB

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the publication history of Physics Letters B from 1967 to 2020 using online data to understand trends in particle physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics, and cosmology research dissemination.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of PLB publication trends over more than five decades, highlighting historical publishing patterns in high energy physics and related fields.

Findings

Publication trends over time in PLB

Disciplinary focus shifts in PLB publications

Insights into the evolution of particle physics research

Abstract

Having been an editor for Physics Letters B (PLB) for many years I became interested in the history of publishing, especially in particle physics (HEP). Since PLB goes back to 1967 and an index of all PLB publications is available online, this information was used to look at the history of PLB publications over time. It should be noted that PLB publishes new results in particle physics or high energy physics, nuclear physics and also in astrophysics and cosmology. This is the start of an effort to look at all publishers that publish research from HEP.