Dataset for "Have we reached the beginning of the end for review papers?" QSS

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.