Between Pink Noise and White Noise: A Digital History of The American Journal of Psychology and Psychological Review

The frequency with which authors contribute to The American Journal of Psychology (AJP) or Psychological Review (PR) is analyzed from the inceptions of both journals (1887 for AJP and 1894 for PR) until 2015. In the beginning, a small number of authors tend to make a large percentage of contributions, but this percentage shrinks over time. The slopes of the author distributions for each journal start out close to -1 (pink noise) and then gradually drift toward 0 (white noise). This means that the distributions flatten as the authors become more diverse, which in turn changes the experience of reading the journals. An explanation of these findings focuses on two factors. One is an increase in the amount of congestion as the number of authors grows ever larger. The other is a decline in the cohesiveness of the community of authors.