ISI's Science Citation Index's Comparative Statistical Summary (the blue
softcover book that accompanies the print version) does totals for the
source publications covered by ISI.

I had the 2001 Summary on my desk.  Here are their figures:

Total Source Publications: 3,727
Total Number of Articles: 579,666

By my calculations, that results in 156 articles per title, which seems
higher than Steve's estimate, but within the same ballpark considering the
source.

Please be mindful that:
1) There is no "average journal".  Some publish hundreds of articles per
year, others a few dozen
2) The definition of a journal
3) The definition of an article
4) ISI is not a representative sample of the universe of journal
publications (Ulrichs may be a better tool)

ISI cumulates these figures each time they publish this report, so it
wouldn't be difficult for this professor to plug them into a spreadsheet
and look at the trend (I did a couple of years ago).  Both publishers and
librarians are in agreement that journals (on average) are getting bigger
-- this was an argument from a large publisher to substantiate egregious
price increases.

Respectfully submitted,
Phil Davis
Cornell University

>Date:    Tue, 2 Dec 2003 09:51:06 -0500
>From:    Steve Black <blacks@MAIL.STROSE.EDU>
>Subject: Re: Average no. of articles in academic journals
>
>For Question 1, I searched in EBSCOhost's Academic Search Elite, limiting to
>full text, peer-reviewed, for 2002, for [blank] in default fields.  That
>retrieved 110,168 hits.  The database information claims that there are 1300
>peer-reviewed journals in full text, so that comes to about 85 articles per
>title per year.  There are of course caveats & cautions with using this
>number, but it's probably a pretty fair estimate for all disciplines lumped
>together.  I'd just want to be sure the professor doesn't want to apply the
>85 to any one discipline, because the count would almost surely be
>different.
>
>I'll leave Question 2 to some other brave soul.
>
>Steve Black
>Reference, Instruction, and Serials Librarian
>Neil Hellman Library
>The College of Saint Rose
>392 Western Ave.
>Albany, NY 12203
>(518) 458-5494
>blacks@mail.strose.edu
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
>[mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU]On Behalf Of Ann Ercelawn
>Sent: Monday, December 01, 2003 3:17 PM
>To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
>Subject: [SERIALST] Average no. of articles in academic journals
>
>
>Hello,
>A professor here has asked thetwo questions below. Can SERIALST
>readers help with this query?
>Thanks,
>Ann
>
> >> Question: What is the average number of articles published
> >> annually in individual academic journals?  I am interested in an
> >> average number per journal over a wide range of journals.
> >>
> >> Similarly, what is the average page count annually per journal?
> >>