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Medical, environmental and computer sciences are booming while traditional
disciplines such as mathematics and physics are in decline. The Institute
for Scientific Information, based in Philadelphia, reached this conclusion
after analysing the 364 scientific, technological and medical journals launched
last year.

More than a quarter of new journals (28.6 per cent) were in clinical
medicine and another 18.7 per cent in biology, underscoring the ascendancy
of these disciplines, says David Pendlebury, the editor of the ISI’s journal,
ScienceWatch. ‘But there’s a distinctly green feel to many of the new titles.’
Agricultural and environmental sciences formed the third highest category,
accounting for 17.3 per cent of new publications. Mathematics and physics
trailed the rest of the field, with just 3.9 and 3 per cent of the total.

As an additional index of current fads, Pendlebury analysed the names
of the new journals. The word ‘international’ appeared most times in titles
(25) with biological and computing prefixes in second and third places.
But titles with ‘eco’ and ‘environment’ in the title were also common.

Terms such as ‘micro’ and ‘nano’ showed a steady increase in the number
of journals devoted to the very small, and several new journals were devoted
to the field of imaging.