Positive correlation between quality and quantity in academic journals

• High impact journals publish more articles.
• Quality and quantity are positively correlated.
• A new plot of article number versus impact factor is proposed.

This study reports a positive correlation between impact factor and article number in scholarly journals. High impact journals publish more articles. Quality and quantity are positively correlated. This is a common trend in different disciplines as revealed by empirical data. The correlation is obscure in a direct plot of article number versus impact factor. A plot of accumulated article number versus normalized rank of impact factor clearly demonstrates the correlation. The reasons behind this correlation are discussed.