The gerontocracy of science: attention dynamics in the age of exponential growth

Scientific literature has grown exponentially for decades, yet the implications of this information growth for scientific production remain underexplored. In this study, we examine how rapid expansion affects the circulation and uptake of emerging scientific ideas. We show that, across fields, citations are increasingly concentrated on a shrinking fraction of papers, while the life cycles of scientific works are lengthening. This reduces turnover among the most cited publications and progressively stabilises academic canons, so that scientific literature appears to be moving toward a form of ‘gerontocracy.’ To assess whether exponential growth itself drives this trend, we develop a generative citation model with random discovery, cumulative advantage and a tunable growth rate. Our results show that exponential growth alone can generate gerontocratic dynamics that diminish the visibility and influence of new research, highlighting a system-level problem: preserving the capacity of scientific literature to absorb new work into its core.