Imperial College London

Henry Rzepa

The title might give it away; this is my 500th blog post, the
[first](http://www.ch.imperial.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/?p=8){target="_blank"}
having come some eight years ago. Very little online activity nowadays
is excluded from measurement and so it is no surprise that this blog and
another of my \"other\" scholarly endeavours, *viz* publishing in
traditional journals, attract such \"metrics\" or statistics. The
[h-index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index){target="_blank"} is a
well-known but somewhat controversial measure of the impact of journal
articles; here I thought I might instead take a look at three less
familiar ones -- one relating to blogging, one specific to journal
publishing and one to research data.

First, an update on the accumulated outreach of this blog over this
seven-year period. The total number of country domains measured is 190.
The African continent still has quite a few areas with zero hits (as
does Svalbard, with a population of only 2600 for a land mass area
61,000 km^2^ or 23 km^2^ per person). Given the low blog readership
density on the African continent, it would be interesting to find out
whether journal readership is any better.

![](http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/190-demographics.jpg){decoding="async"
width="440"}

Next, I look at the temporal distribution for individual posts. The
[first](http://www.ch.imperial.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/?p=5114){target="_blank"}
has attracted the highest total; in five years it has had 19,262 views
(the diagram below shows the number of views per day). Four others
exceed 10,000 and 80 exceed 1000 views.

![](http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/hits-1.jpg){decoding="async"
width="440"}

Of these five, the
[next](http://www.ch.imperial.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/?p=439){target="_blank"}
is the oldest, going back to 2009. I was very surprised to find such
longevity, with the number of views increasing rather than decreasing
with the passage of time.

![](http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/hits-4.jpg){decoding="async"
width="440"}

So time now to compare these statistics with the journals. And of course
its chalk and cheese. A \"view\" for a post means someone (or something)
accessing the post URL, which is then recorded in the server log.
Resolving the URL does at least load the entire content of the post;
whether its read or not is of course not recorded. Importantly, if you
want to view the content at some later stage, a new \"view\" has to be
made (although some browsers do save a web page and allow offline
viewing at a later stage, but I suspect this usage is low). With
electronic journal access, it\'s rather different. Access to an article
is now predominantly via two mechanisms:

1.  From the table of contents (this is somewhat analogous to browsing a
    blog)
2.  From the article DOI.

Statistics for these two methods are gathered differently. The new
CrossRef resource
[chronograph.labs.crossref.org](http://chronograph.labs.crossref.org/){target="_blank"}
(CrossRef allocate all journal DOIs) can be used to measure what they
call DOI \"resolutions\". A DOI resolution however leads one only to
what is called the \"landing page\", where the interested reader can
view the title, the graphical abstract and some other metadata. It does
not mean of course that they go on to actually view the article (as
HTML, equivalent to the blog above, or probably more often by
downloading a PDF file). Here are a few results using this method:

- [chronograph.labs.crossref.org/dois/10.1021/ja710438j](http://chronograph.labs.crossref.org/dois/10.1021/ja710438j){target="_blank"}
  tracks this article\[cite\]10.1021/ja710438j\[/cite\] which I selected
  (in part) because it was published in 2008, just slightly before the
  oldest post above. In fact, the resolutions log only goes back to
  October 2010, by which time the initial flush of any interest in this
  article would have subsided and so its nice to see continuing interest
  (= impact?).

   

  ![](http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/10.1021_ja710438j.jpg){decoding="async"
  width="440"}

- [chronograph.labs.crossref.org/dois/10.1002/anie.201409672](http://chronograph.labs.crossref.org/dois/10.1002/anie.201409672){target="_blank"}
  \[cite\]10.1002/anie.201409672\[/cite\] totals 208 resolutions, but as
  the graph below shows, 188 of these were on the first day of
  publication (Nov 19, 2014), then a few days gap and then about a month
  of daily resolutions, followed by occasional interest since then.  
  ![](http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/10.1002_anie.201409672.jpg){decoding="async"
  width="440"}

- [chronograph.labs.crossref.org/dois/10.1126/science.1181771](http://chronograph.labs.crossref.org/dois/10.1126/science.1181771){target="_blank"}
  dates from 2010\[cite\]10.1126/science.1181771\[/cite\] and this time
  shows no peak on the first day, but again steady continuing interest
  to a current 245 resolutions.  
  ![](http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/10.1126_science.1181771.jpg){decoding="async"
  width="440"}

What about the other main journal article access method, not *via* a DOI
but from a table of contents page journal page? A Google search revealed
this site: [jusp.mimas.ac.uk](http://jusp.mimas.ac.uk){target="_blank"}
(**JUSP** stands for Journal usage statistics portal, which sounded
promising). This site collects \"COUNTER compliant usage data\".
[COUNTER](http://www.projectcounter.org/about.html){target="_blank"}
(Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources) is an
initiative supported by many journal publishers and it sounds an
interesting way of measuring \"usage\" (as opposed to \"views\" or
\"resolutions\"; it\'s that chalk and cheese again!). I would love to be
able to show you some statistics using this resource, but the \"small
print\" caught me out: \"JUSP gives librarians a simple way of analysing
the value and impact of their electronic journals\". Put simply, I am a
researcher, not a librarian. As a researcher I do not have direct
access; JUSP is a closed, restricted access (albeit taxpayer-funded)
resource. I am discussing this with our head of information resources
(who is a librarian) and hope to report back here on the outcome.

Finally research data. This is almost too new to be able to measure, but
this resource
[stats.datacite.org](http://stats.datacite.org/){target="_blank"} is
starting to collect statistics on data resolutions (similar to DOI
resolutions).

1.  You can see from the below for Imperial College (in fact this
    represents the two data repositories that we operate and which I
    cite here extensively on these blogs) that the resolution at running
    up to about 200 a month per dataset (more typically \~25 a month),
    with a total of 5065 resolutions for all items in March 2016 (the
    blog has \~12,000 views per month).

     

    ![](http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/data.jpg){decoding="async"
    width="440"}

2.  Figshare is another data repository we have made use of:  

    ::: {.iframe}
    |                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          |                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 |                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          |
    |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
    | [![](//website-p-eu.figstatic.com/assets/04676455773a66ce0a9cfc15518bdb09368b553b/public/global/badge_logo.png){style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;border: 0px;margin-top: 3px;"}](https://figshare.com/authors/Henry_S_Rzepa/96582){target="_blank" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; margin-left: 5px;"} | [Henry S. Rzepa on fig**share**](https://figshare.com/authors/Henry_S_Rzepa/96582){target="_blank" style="float: left;text-decoration: none; margin: 0px; padding:0px;margin-top: 0px;color: #55616F;font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; padding-left: 10px;"} | [2714990]{style="float: right;margin-right: 2px;background-color: #59C4BC;-webkit-border-radius: 6px;-moz-border-radius: 6px;border-radius: 6px; color: white;font-size: 10px; font-family: Arial; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px;padding: 4px;"} |
    :::

So to the summary.

1.  Firstly, we see that I have shown three forms of impact, **views**,
    r**esolutions** and **usage**. If one had statistics on all three,
    one might then try to see if they are correlated in any way. Even
    then, normalisation might be a challenge.
2.  Over \~7 years, five posts on this blog have attracted \>10,000
    views.
3.  Many of the blog posts have a long \"finish\" (to use a wine tasting
    term); the views continue regularly and often increase over time.
4.  My analysis of the three journal articles above (and about 15
    others) shows that between 50-300 resolutions over a few years is
    fairly typical (for this researcher at least; I am sure most better
    known researchers attract far far more).
5.  The temporal distribution for article resolutions and blog views
    show both can have continuing impact over an extended period. None
    of the 18 articles I looked at show a significantly increasing
    impact with time but many of the blog posts do. This tends to
    suggest that the audiences for each are quite different; researchers
    for articles and a fair proportion of inquisitive students for the
    blog?
6.  I may speculate whether a correlation between my article resolutions
    and my h-index probably might be found, but the article resolution
    has a fine-grained temporal resolution (allowing a derivative wrt
    time to be obtained) that is perhaps potentially more valuable than
    just the coarse h-index integration (an article can of course be
    cited for both positive and negative reasons!).
7.  Initial analysis for data shows resolutions running at a similar
    rate to article resolutions. It is not yet possible to correlate
    data resolutions with article resolutions in which that data is
    discussed.

::: {.wp_orcid_field}
[https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8635-8390](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8635-8390){target="_blank"
rel="author"}
:::


The title might give it away; this is my 500th blog post, the first having come some eight years ago. Very little online activity nowadays is excluded from measurement and so it is no surprise that this blog and another of my "other" scholarly endeavours,
<em>
 viz
</em>
publishing in traditional journals, attract such "metrics" or statistics.

Postagens de Rogue Scholar

500 chemical twists: a (chalk and cheese) comparison of the impacts of blog posts and journal articles.