How do mathematicians publish? – Some trends

Abstract

We have already discussed bibliometric measures for the mathematics corpus in this column before. This included the unusual longevity of mathematics citations, effects of delayed publication due to often long and complex refereeing processes, and the specifics of different mathematical areas. It has become clear that purely numerical criteria are often unsuitable to measure mathematical quality or the scientific impact of publications. At the same time, the bibliometric results often depend on mathematical subfields, thus reflecting the structure and different behaviour of mathematical communities. In this column we concentrate on an author-oriented viewpoint. We will derive some quantities which illustrate how the landscape of mathematical publications has changed over the past decades.