(a) Number of publications per year in the period 1823–2016. The full-text corpus encompasses both the PMC and TDM corpus. The growth in publications was found to fit an exponential model. (b) Temporal development in the distribution of six different topical categories in the period 1823–2016. Publications from health science journals made up nearly 75% of all publications until 1950, at which point it started to decrease rapidly. To date, it makes up approximately 25% of the publications in the full-text corpus. (c) Development in the number of pages per article in the period 1823–2016. The range of pages varies from 1–1,572 pages. Until year 1900 the number of one-page articles were increasing, at one point making up 75% of all articles. At the end of the 19th century, the number of one-page articles started to decrease, and by the start of the 21th century they made up less than 20%. Conversely, the number of articles with 11+ pages has been increasing, and by the start of the 21th century made up more than 20% of all articles.