I believe that researchers like us read a lot on most working days (w).  So the amount that we read a year is that value multiplied by about 200 working days here (200w).  We do not have summer holidays or our economy will collapse, because we have eternal summer.  So you are quite accurate, at least 200 articles a year.  300 articles is also a possible estimate.

I completely agree that we are writing too much and reading too little. I also agree that the way in which scientific preformance is measured does barely honour thorough literature researches as the latter takes too much time. And if you dig deep enough into the literature, you will likely find out that you were not the first one who had the research idea you are currently working on. You are much quicker if you read little and just submit manuscripts.. if the reviewers do not read much either, they will not notice that similar works had already been done... and you will get a lot of articles out quickly. If you are then also skilled in self-marketing, you will make a splendid career in science. It is quite daft.

I am not so young anymore, but I am working in a governmental applied university that is famous for its large teacher to student ratio. I therefore have relatively little teaching loads. I am taking my time to read and may reach 200-300 articles per year (depending on what counts as reading and what counts as skimming over).. but I am not sure if I am doing myself a favour with this. In the end, I am afraid, it is not the know-how but the number of articles that decides your fate in science.

Furthermore, you likely will not get research money if you are not researching what everybody else is also researching. I find this even more frustrating. In times in which research financing is more and more project based, reasearchers need to apply for projects in fields they are not properly familiar with and interested in. Another mechanism to support rubbish papers.. and to smother innovation.

As a part-time senior student from Open University Malaysia .Back to year 2009 , when I am start reading on sociology.  I only managed to read about 50-80 articles a year because I am never do any readings on this subject . But after I spending about a year or more by referring to all major basic text book , and I am able to understand all the important terminology and basic theories , my reading speed increasing from less than 100 ,and able to reach more than 150 article or more per year .( please remember I am a part time student , I only able to spare 2 to 3 hours of reading time dairy and a full Saturday when I am in OUM library ) . I do believe , this figure is reasonable as a part time PhD student .

Dear Phillippe,

Yes, you are right. It seems to me that in my environment professional „scientists” read less and less.   Sometimes, it is amazing how little these “specialists” know on the scientific literature. One can recognise this lack of information of new professional information mainly in discussions at defences of dissertations. There are two main factors of this situation: the deficiency of personnel interests and university libraries are very poor (practically no modern books, no journals) in some countries. The number of articles and studies read in a year in my case must be over 300. It is because of being supervisor of several students, I have to be familiar with the scientific background of their subjects.  Another problem with reading, that many university teachers and researchers do not know belles-lettres and culture. Many of them are culturally illiterates.  

Dear Ivo,

Thanks for your thorough comment. You have fine explained and presented many phenomena that may play a crucial role in developing a scientist. I can but stress the general pattern that many PhDs are no more PhDs (doctors of philosophy) but technical specialists without view for the complexity of life that contains past and future, art and music etc. and this belongs somehow to the job of a brainworker.  Thanks again.

Let me take a specific starting point. I review around 10 articles a year for my discipline's journals. So that's reading 10 articles (not yet published). Per review, I possibly read 6 other articles to support my review. So, that's about 60 per year. Separately, I seem to publish about 2 articles per year, and I would estimate an average reading of at least 20 articles per article of mine published, i.e. about 40 articles a year. So, I would say I read about 100 articles per year on average. Some years with heavy teaching, these 100 might be entirely constrained to the very specific papers I am writing and reviewing, and in other years, they might be more broadly oriented. But I definitely agree that we are reading less and less. Another observation I might add is that we are possibly reading less "within" an article, i.e. reading only some key portions rather than read the whole article, in a bid to not allow the "number" of articles read to drop drastically. 

This question raises another issue, which is the quality of the publication.  Yes, there is many publications but few of them provide a real contribution. Pressure on the academic members and researchers forces them to create a new space for publication by creating interchangeable terms.

Any scholar can create a term for his/her own new definition that becomes interchangeable with other terms in which the reader becomes disoriented. In some case, the scholar can create her/his own definition that serves the research (procedural definition) but this is not the case when a new definition is created without any rational purpose. Furthermore,in many articles, some terms are created without even providing definitions.

Terminological discipline is needed to implement as a starting point to fix the system.