%0 Journal Article
%T Growth in the number of references in engineering journal papers during the 1972-2013 period
%A I£¿aki Ucar
%A Felipe L¨®pez-Fernandino
%A Pablo Rodriguez-Ulibarri
%A Laura Sesma-Sanchez
%A Veronica Urrea-Mic¨®
%A Joaqu¨ªn Sevilla
%J Computer Science
%D 2013
%I arXiv
%R 10.1007/s11192-013-1113-6
%X 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.
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.4223v2