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OpenSees Bean Counting

Original Post - 23 May 2024 - Michael H. Scott

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Based on review invitations, new paper announcements on social media, and Google Scholar citation alerts, I’ve seen a lot of OpenSees-based journal articles. I’m sure you have as well.

With a few exceptions, the journals that house OpenSees-based articles have been the usual suspects in earthquake engineering. But recently, it’s felt like the distribution of journals has skewed, so I did a little investigation.

I found the number of articles that contain the keyword “OpenSees” published in the following journals:

• Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics
• Earthquake Spectra
• Engineering Structures
• Journal of Structural Engineering
• Structures

Getting the data is easy with each journal’s advanced search feature. Try it yourself.

The results for 2010-2023 are shown below.

Since 2010, the number of OpenSees articles published in Earthquake Spectra has held steady while there are overall upward trends in the Journal of Structural Engineering and Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics.

Through 2016, Engineering Structures followed a similar trajectory to JSE and EESD, then its OpenSees output significantly increased. Since 2020, the journal has averaged over 150 OpenSees articles per year.

The biggest surprise is Structures. Launched in 2015, the journal’s OpenSees output has rapidly increased since 2019, even eclipsing Engineering Structures in 2023.

There’s no doubt Engineering Structures and Structures now publish more total articles each year than they did a decade ago, but I cannot explain the rise in OpenSees articles. I welcome your thoughts and theories in the comments section.

Don’t get me wrong though–more OpenSees articles is not a bad thing, at least not for my citation count. But does more OpenSees articles translate into more OpenSees innovation? That’s hard to determine; however, the number of pull requests for OpenSees source code, documentation, and examples certainly has not kept up with the number of OpenSees journal articles.