A Scopus-Based Assessment (2021–2025) of Hyperprolific Authors Who Publish at Least One Document Every Two Days

In this paper, a hyperprolific author (HA) is defined as someone who publishes, on average, at least one Scopus-indexed document every two days. Using Scopus data from 2021 to 2025, we examined HAs to explore their publishing volume, authorship and collaboration patterns, and citation impact. The analysis identified 41 HAs, each of whom published at least 913 documents during the 1,826-day study period. These authors collectively produced 21,971 unique documents, accounting for roughly 0.1% of all Scopus-indexed publications during this period. These 21,971 unique documents were mainly concentrated in a few subject areas, primarily Medicine (45.8%), Engineering (24.9%), and Computer Science (13.7%). Most publications were classified as articles (58.3%), followed by letters (13.2%) and notes (9.6%). More than half of the HAs formed a closely connected co-authorship cluster associated with the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials, Inc. (RIFM). This cluster published almost exclusively in one journal (Food and Chemical Toxicology) and had international collaboration rates exceeding 95%. For most members of this cluster, short surveys accounted for the majority of their individual publication output. Two smaller clusters identified in Physics and Medicine showed very high levels of international collaboration but published across a broader range of journals and document types. Citation impact varied substantially among HAs, with field-weighted citation impact ranging from nearly zero to 6.68 and citations per publication from 0.0 to 54.5. Overall, these findings suggest that hyperprolific authorship is a complex and heterogeneous publishing pattern that can reflect large, coordinated teams producing standardized outputs, highly collaborative, internationally integrated research efforts, or individual authors engaged in commentary-focused publishing.