2026-10-07T14:40:37Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/32077821 2026-10-05T14:51:11Z category_28930 item_type_3 month_year_10_2026

Dataset for "Have we reached the beginning of the end for review papers?" QSS Barry Smyth (23776272) Data engineering and data science scientometrics; data paper; research paper; automation <p dir="ltr">Review papers have traditionally enjoyed a high status in academic publishing because of the important role they can play in summarising and synthesising a field of research. They can also attract significantly more citations than primary research papers, making them appealing to authors. There has been a dramatic increase in the publication of review papers in recent years, both in raw numbers and as a proportion of overall publication output. In this paper, we demonstrate this increase across a wide range of fields of study. We quantify the citation dividend associated with review papers, demonstrate that it is declining, and discuss the reasons for this decline. We further show that, since the recent arrival of GenAI tools, there is widespread use of GenAI in research paper writing, and we present evidence of a stronger AI signal in review papers than in primary research papers. We suggest that the potential for GenAI to accelerate and even automate the production of review papers will have a further significant impact on their status.</p> 2026-04-23T14:09:34Z Dataset Dataset 10.6084/m9.figshare.32077821.v2 https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Dataset_for_Have_we_reached_the_beginning_of_the_end_for_review_papers_QSS/32077821 CC BY 4.0