fake exponential growth with error

fake.R

library(dplyr)
library(ggplot2)
data_frame(x = seq(2001, 2016, by = 2), 
           y = exp(rnorm(length(x), mean = 0.3, sd = 0.03)*(x - 2000))) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = x, y = y)) + geom_point() + geom_line() + 
  labs(x = "Year",
       y = "Cumulative number of papers",
       title = "Number of papers with a 'Number of papers' figure") + 
  theme_bw()