Research on Research on Research: Analyzing historical trends in statistical and computational research from the 1990s to modern day

This paper analyzes changes in research paper output across statistical and computational fields over the period from the 1990s to 2025, and projects short-term growth for recently emerging fields in an effort to identify those likely to receive further resource funding and attention in the near future. Papers used for the analysis are drawn from a dataset of arXiv preprint metadata. Methods include retrospective publication analysis, field-level time-series forecasting, and comparison of trajectories across statistics and computation subfields.Keywords: retrospective analysis, arXiv, publication analysis, forecasting, time series. Working paper, UCLA Department of Statistics and Data Science, 20 March 2025. Presented in slide form at UCLA Undergraduate Research Week 2025.