How many research papers are published every day? (2026 data)
On a typical day about 24,130 research papers are published around the world — about 1,005 every hour, or one every 4 seconds. Including papers dated only by month, the world publishes roughly 9.1 million papers a year.
Updated automatically every day. Data: 29 fully counted days, September 26, 2026 – October 24, 2026. Source: OpenAlex and PubMed.
How many papers a day, exactly?
Over the last 29 fully counted days the world published 719,978 papers, an average of 24,827 a day (typical day: 24,130). The busiest ordinary day was September 30, 2026 with 61,210 papers; the quietest was October 24, 2026 with 8,638. The exception is the 1st of each month: on October 1, 2026 93,890 papers carry that date, because papers known only by their month are dated the 1st.
PubMed, the main database for medicine and life sciences, added an average of 4,427 records a day. And every day new papers cite older work about 348,984 times.
Which day of the week has the most papers?
Thursday is the busiest publishing day and Sunday the quietest. Typical papers per day of the week (median, leaving out the 1st of the month):
| Day | Typical papers |
|---|---|
| Monday | 24,879 |
| Tuesday | 26,766 |
| Wednesday | 27,321 |
| Thursday | 27,597 |
| Friday | 22,509 |
| Saturday | 12,005 |
| Sunday | 10,600 |
The last 14 days
| Date | Papers | Added to PubMed | Citations made |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 24 | 8,638 | 940 | 104,528 |
| Oct 23 | 20,820 | 11,613 | 361,700 |
| Oct 22 | 23,360 | 5,286 | 317,027 |
| Oct 21 | 24,280 | 730 | 342,021 |
| Oct 20 | 26,766 | 4,729 | 306,456 |
| Oct 19 | 22,724 | 3,111 | 306,102 |
| Oct 18 | 9,389 | 2,341 | 102,074 |
| Oct 17 | 12,005 | 3,405 | 188,648 |
| Oct 16 | 22,509 | 7,031 | 341,435 |
| Oct 15 | 27,838 | 5,747 | 387,461 |
| Oct 14 | 26,614 | 5,503 | 398,531 |
| Oct 13 | 25,912 | 6,665 | 353,469 |
| Oct 12 | 24,130 | 2,713 | 379,238 |
| Oct 11 | 10,615 | 4,277 | 120,400 |
What counts as a "paper"?
We count journal articles, reviews, preprints, letters, conference papers and book chapters, by their publication date, from OpenAlex, an open index of the world's research. Datasets, errata and peer reviews are left out. Recent days keep rising for about a week as journals report late, so we only use days that are fully counted.
See today's numbers live on the ResearchBoard dashboard.