THE EFFECT OF GROWTH ON THE OBSOLESCENCE OF SEMICONDUCTOR PHYSICS LITERATURE

Abstract

Semiconductor physics literature is studied in order to investigate recent hypotheses relating obsolescence to the growth in periodical literature and the growth in the number of contributing scientists. The results indicate that obsolescence remains constant and that the two growth rates are, within experimental error, of equal magnitude for this subject over a five‐year period. These results are seen to be inconsistent with the assumption that an exponentially‐growing literature possesses a constant utility.