{"id":9257,"date":"2013-01-20T11:39:12","date_gmt":"2013-01-20T11:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=9257"},"modified":"2013-07-19T17:12:36","modified_gmt":"2013-07-19T16:12:36","slug":"the-demographics-of-a-blog-readership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=9257","title":{"rendered":"The demographics of a blog readership."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

With metrics in science publishing controversial to say the least, I pondered whether to write about the\u00a0impact<\/em>\/influence<\/em> a science-based blog might have (never mind whether it constitutes any measure of esteem<\/em>). These are all terms that feature large when an (academic) organisation undertakes a survey of its researchers’ effectiveness.\u2021<\/sup> WordPress (the organisation that provides the software used for this blog) recently enhanced the stats it offers for its users, and one of these caught my eye.<\/p>\n

\"impact-factor\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The above represents the demographics for the readership of this blog over the last ten months. In no particular order, I noted the following aspects:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The total number of countries listed was 144.<\/li>\n
  2. The country coming third was India.<\/li>\n
  3. China came 51st. I noted this since it was recently announced in the news<\/a> that China leads the world by a significant margin in patents granted for e.g.<\/em> graphene research, with South Korea third. It would also be fair to say that China also heads the field for the\u00a0number of chemists with a Ph.D. degree.<\/li>\n
  4. There are some interesting gaps in the world map, from where not a single hit was recorded. I really must crack Greenland!\u00a0<\/li>\n
  5. WordPress does not provide a demographic breakdown for individual posts, which would be an interesting one to see.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    One does not get such statistics from conventional scientific publishers, where the number of citations of an article is considered far more important than the demographics of its readership. However, I cannot help but note that access to journals is largely controlled by paid-for subscriptions (the GOLD-OA model has yet to make a big impact in chemistry I fear), whereas blogs in contrast are almost entirely open (although access to them may be restricted in some countries).\u00a0<\/p>\n

    \n

    \u2021 \u00a0I once listened to a talk by a manager whose mantra was the three e’s: \u00a0effective, efficient and economic. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n<\/div> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    With metrics in science publishing controversial to say the least, I pondered whether to write about the\u00a0impact\/influence a science-based blog might have (never mind whether it constitutes any measure of esteem). These are all terms that feature large when an (academic) organisation undertakes a survey of its researchers’ effectiveness.\u2021 WordPress (the organisation that provides the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":5,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[986,1108],"ppma_author":[2661],"class_list":["post-9257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-manager","tag-opendata"],"yoast_head":"\nThe demographics of a blog readership. - Henry Rzepa's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=9257\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The demographics of a blog readership. - Henry Rzepa's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With metrics in science publishing controversial to say the least, I pondered whether to write about the\u00a0impact\/influence a science-based blog might have (never mind whether it constitutes any measure of esteem). 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