Bless you Tatyana Dorokhova, and bless the Astronomical Observatory of Odessa National University!
In your Abstract for your article, Exponential Growth of Scientific Information and Orientation in World Wide Web (published in the July 2-5, 2002 issue of Library and Information Services in Astronomy IV), you write,
"A swift growth in the number and length of publications in the narrow, but advanced field of astronomy is shown with certain research examples."
However, although your title refers to exponential growth, your numbers do not. You quote H. Abt, an editor of the Astrophysical Journal, as writing "The average number of papers increased exponentially by nine percent before mid 1970's and by four percent per year thereafter."
Sadly, this look at postwar astronomy seems to show an explosion of knowledge after the war, aided by improvements in astronomical tools (radio telescopes, etc.), and then a return to a very respectable growth rate that would double human knowledge in this sector in 18 years. (Lest you think I actually did the math, I refer you to the Rule of 72 website, which has a doubling calculator.) Even the 9% growth rate before the mid-1970's would yield a doubling only once every 8 years.
Once again, we are frustrated in our attempts to show doubling of human knowledge every five years.
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