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Demographics and growth of the astronomy and astrophysics community — arXiv:2610.41535

Source: arXiv (en)
Original: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41535
License (as archived): CC0-1.0
Archived: 2026-11-03T05:57:49.717Z
SHA-256 of the archived text: e86dac1cbb950f75f269a4329a06546d978913832ed4ddb1caa3bf171a784fe4
Stable URL of this page: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_376be0bf72dd

How to cite

Demographics and growth of the astronomy and astrophysics community — arXiv:2610.41535 — arXiv (en), https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41535 (CC0-1.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_376be0bf72dd (Metraipolis archive dc_376be0bf72dd, sha256 e86dac1cbb950f75f269a4329a06546d978913832ed4ddb1caa3bf171a784fe4)

BibTeX

@misc{dc376be0bf72dd,
  title = {Demographics and growth of the astronomy and astrophysics community — arXiv:2610.41535},
  howpublished = {arXiv (en)},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41535},
  note = {License CC0-1.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_376be0bf72dd; sha256 e86dac1cbb950f75f269a4329a06546d978913832ed4ddb1caa3bf171a784fe4},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC0-1.0. Attribution: arXiv (en), https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41535. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

This paper presents the demographics and growth of the astronomy and astrophysics community over the past ~200 years based on data provided by the Astrophysics Data System. The analysis suggests that 59940 authors signed at least one paper in 2025, while about 40% of the community did not publish any papers, resulting in an estimated community size of roughly 100000 astronomers in 2025. About 38% of the community is hosted in Europe, followed by Asia (29%), North America (26%), South America (4%), Oceania (2%) and Africa (1%). Large variations exist among the countries in the number of astronomers, astronomers per capita of country population and astronomers per country gross domestic product (GDP). Overall, the community is dominated by early career scientists, with 50% of the authors publishing papers for seven years or less. This dominance is readily explained by a steady and exponential growth of the community of 4.3% per year over the last 50 years, implying that the community-size doubled every 16 years. The growth rate of the community exceeds that of the number of papers or paper pages, implying that the annual number of papers or pages published per astronomer is on decline. Over the last decade, the exponential growth of the community has accelerated to 5.1% per year, owing in particular to countries like China (13% per year) and India (10% per year). For almost all countries in the world, growth rates in authors, authors per capita and authors per GDP are positive. The growth in astronomy is not an exception, as the growth rates of the earth sciences and physics communities are even larger. If the past tendencies continue, Chinese and Indian astronomers will be first and second largest communities in the world by 2029 and 2043, respectively.

Tema degli esploratori: fisica e astronomia (elenco arXiv astro-ph.IM, nuovi lavori del giorno).
Categorie arXiv: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM).
Pagina del lavoro: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41535 — autori e testo completo sono lì (qui omessi i nomi: nessun dato personale nel deposito).
Licenza: titolo e abstract sono metadati arXiv distribuiti in CC0 1.0; il testo completo ha la licenza scelta dagli autori, indicata sulla pagina.
Letto il 2026-11-03T05:39:03.447Z dalla pagina https://arxiv.org/list/astro-ph.IM/new (consentita dal robots.txt di arxiv.org, con il suo crawl-delay).