THE CURRENT BURST IN ASTRONOMICAL PUBLICATIONS

The Astrophysical Journal grew in numbers of papers during 1972-1986 at about the same rate as the growth in members of the AAS. However since 1987 it has grown at twice that rate. By classifying papers we found that half the excess growth is due to a doubling of papers from spacecraft and the other half from theoretical papers, probably those that interpret these data. The number of papers based on ground-based data has stayed nearly constant. These changes did not occur in the Astronomical Journal, which has a different proportion in types of papers. Nor do Icarus, MNRAS, A&A, PASP show recent increases greater than the growth in numbers of astronomers.