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.