Demographics and growth of the astronomy and astrophysics community

Abstract

This paper presents the demographics and growth of the astronomy and astrophysics community over the past ~200 years based on data provided by the Astrophysics Data System. The analysis suggests that 59940 authors signed at least one paper in 2025, while about 40% of the community did not publish any papers, resulting in an estimated community size of roughly 100000 astronomers in 2025. About 38% of the community is hosted in Europe, followed by Asia (29%), North America (26%), South America (4%), Oceania (2%) and Africa (1%). Large variations exist among the countries in the number of astronomers, astronomers per capita of country population and astronomers per country gross domestic product (GDP). Overall, the community is dominated by early career scientists, with 50% of the authors publishing papers for seven years or less. This dominance is readily explained by a steady and exponential growth of the community of 4.3% per year over the last 50 years, implying that the community-size doubled every 16 years. The growth rate of the community exceeds that of the number of papers or paper pages, implying that the annual number of papers or pages published per astronomer is on decline. Over the last decade, the exponential growth of the community has accelerated to 5.1% per year, owing in particular to countries like China (13% per year) and India (10% per year). For almost all countries in the world, growth rates in authors, authors per capita and authors per GDP are positive. The growth in astronomy is not an exception, as the growth rates of the earth sciences and physics communities are even larger. If the past tendencies continue, Chinese and Indian astronomers will be first and second largest communities in the world by 2029 and 2043, respectively.