All entries for Thursday 09 January 2025

January 09, 2025

2024 Retrospective: Most Downloaded Articles

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/issue/archive

Looking back to the most downloaded articles published in Exchanges in the past year, along with a special focus on those first published in 2024. Small surprises and recurring old friends abound.

Following on my previous two posts looking at popular issues and podcast episodes, today my attention turns to the subject probably of most interest to our readers: the most popular articles. 2024 was a halcyon year for Exchanges as we published the most articles in our 12 year history. 67 articles across nearly 1,000 pages – quite an accomplishment for the authors and editorial team members! Yet, currency doesn’t always equate with immediacy of academic interest, and as you’ll see from the chart below, the most popular articles with our readers last year demonstrate the longevity of value readers ascribe to pieces appearing in our pages.[1]

Position	Author	Title	Volume	Year	Type	2023 Rank
1	Pavel Fedotov	Critical Analysis of the Electric Vehicle Industry: Five forces and strategic action fields	10(1)	2022	Article	#1
2	Eve Benhamou	From the Advent of Multiculturalism to the Elision of Race: The Representation of Race Relations in Disney Animated Features (1995-2009)	2(1)	2014	Critical Reflection	#5
3	Catherine Price et al.	Multispecies, More-Than-Human, Nonhuman, Other-Than-Human: Reimagining idioms of animacy in an age of planetary unmaking	10(2)	2023	Conversation	#7
4	Desmond Bellamy	A 'horrid way of feeding': Pervasive, aggressive, repulsive cannibalism	7(3)	2020	Review Article	New Entry
5	Ursula de Leeuw	A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism': Julia Ducournau’s Raw and Bataillean Horror	7(2)	2020	Article	#4
6	Simon Varwell	A Literature Review of Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation: Lessons for contemporary student engagement	10(1)	2022	Article	#6
7	Rita Augestad Knudsen	Mental Health Exemptions to Criminal Responsibility: Between law, medicine, politics and security	11(2)	2024	Article	New Entry
8	Paul Wilson	Academic Fraud: Solving the Crisis in Modern Academia	7(3)	2020	Article	New Entry
9	Raad Khair Allah	The Use of Miro in Teaching Practice	10(3)	2023	Criticial Reflection	New Entry
10	Ann Haughton	Myths of Male Same-Sex Love in the Art of the Italian Renaissance	3(1)	2015	Article	New Entry

As is often the way with these charts, there are always some surprises. However, I was not surprised to see Pavel Fedotov’s article atop the list for the second year in a row. I’ve been periodically glancing at the download statistics through the year, and this paper has continued to show an almost relentless level of interest from our readership. No doubt the twin focus on manufacturing and the electric vehicle industry has a strong, and salient, resonance with researchers globally. If anyone wanted to write a follow-up, counterpoint or companion article, I suspect you’d benefit from a similar degree of interest. Just a suggestion, mind you.

Taking a more holistic view, I am pleased looking across the whole chart to spot that we have a good mix of old favourites and new entries appearing in the top 10 downloads. I am, personally, especially delighted to spot one article from 2024 making the cut as well, with Rita Augestad Knudsen’s article Mental Health Exemptions to Criminal Responsibility popping up in the number 7 position. My congratulations to Rita for authoring a paper with such an immediate interest across our readership – and if you’ve not read it yet, I certainly commend it to you! It’s a gripping and inciteful piece of work, and certainly a personal favourite of mine from last year.

Interestingly, while we do still have interest in articles way back to Exchanges’ early days, it is noticeable that 8 out of the top 10 come from pieces published since 2020 – what might be described as the ‘relatively recent’ period [2]. While, as a humanities scholar I do like to acknowledge the long tail of interest in research knowledge in my own domain, it is clear readers have a particular interest in our more recent publications. Glancing back at last year’s top 10, this currency trend was, if anything, even more pronounced in 2024! As I noted in the most popular issues post, interest in whole volumes of Exchanges prior to 2016 is certainly diminishing too. Make of this what you will, and if you’ve any thoughts on this or the value of continued archival access to ‘older’ materials – let me know in the comments below.

Curiously, the most venerable article in the chart, Eve Benhamou’s From the Advent of Multiculturalism to the Elision of Race, hails from Vol 2(1) of the journal, back in late 2014. I am curious if the topic or contents of the paper alone are responsible for the continued interest? I note this, due to the certain mouse-centric global media goliath mentioned in the article’s subtitle. Benhamou’s article is a frequent entrant in our top 10 annual lists, and hence I have long been intrigued to know if garners readers due to its scholarly contents or from a more casual ‘fan audience’? While I doubt I’ll ever know the answer to this – available metrics do little to clarify it further – if you happen to be one of this paper’s many readers last year, drop me a line and let me know why you love it so much.

Most Popular Article in Each New 2024 Issue

Now, the above chart represents the most popular articles in 2024 across all 30 volumes of the journal published since 2013. But what about the most recent four issues we published in 2024? Which article has had the standout performance in each of these, seems a salient companion question to ask. Curiously this was a statistic which took more digging than I anticipated [3], but after half an hour of data retrieval, number crunching and cross checking to make sure I’d not missed anyone out – I am able to reveal which are the most popular items in each of 2024’s issues of Exchanges.

Volume	Author	Title	Type
11.2 (Spring)	Rita Augestad Knudsen	Mental Health Exemptions to Criminal Responsibility: Between law, medicine, politics and security	Article
11.3 (Research Culture)	Jemina Napier et al.,	Empowering a Global Community Through Co-Production of a Connected University Research Culture	Critical Reflection
11.4 (MRC@50)	Setara Pracha	Moving on from Manderley	Critical Reflection
12.1 (Autumn)	Simon Gansinger	Max Horkheimer on Law's Force of Resistance	Critical Reflection

Okay. Given Rita Augestad Knudsen’s article Mental Health Exemptions to Criminal Responsibility appears in our top 10 overall above there is no surprise that it was also the most popular article in our Spring (Vol 11.2, April) issue. As I’ve already noted, it was a worthy top-dog. Moving on though, to the next issue, our packed Research Culture special (Vol 11.3, August), there was plenty of competition among the 30+ articles within its pages. Curiously, it’s also the article Empowering a Global Community Through Co-Production of a Connected University Research Culture which appears right at the end of the volume, from Jemina Napier et al, which generated the most interest.[4] Glad to see those articles I schedule in the latter parts of the journal still can receive such great attention from the readership.

Now, I was especially curious to see which article would prove the most popular in our Modern Records Centre @ 50 special issue (Vol 11.4, September). I had some thoughts, but I couldn’t say for sure if my favourites were likely to be the same ones which resonated most strongly with the readership. It turns out, actually by a not inconsiderable margin, that Setara Pracha’s article was the winner here. I do recall spending ages finding the right image to accompany its entry in the table of contents, so am delighted that lots of our readers decided to spend some time with Moving on from Manderley. Finally, turning to our final issue of the year (Vol 12.1, October) and we find Simon Gansigner’s intriguing piece concerning Max Horkheimer on Law's Force of Resistance makes the cut. This is a great scholarly piece, and I am delighted to see it receiving such a strong reception from the readers too.

Well done to all the authors appearing in both these lists – and thank you especially to those who contributed to our 2024 publications!

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So, there you go, the most popular articles last year across our whole back-catalogue, alongside those new champions emerging fresh-faced from last year’s new issues. Are you as devastated as I am, that none of the editorials made the cut?[5] Is your favourite article among them, or was something else we published last year your genuine #1 for 2024?

As always, let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

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Endnotes

[1] All values are for downloads of the PDF or HTML version of each article, ignoring people who only accessed each article’s landing page. For an access date range 1^st January to 31^st December 2024, (GMT).

[2] 5 of these are from the ‘post pandemic’ era of 2022-2024 as well.

[3] As I’ve said before, OJS’ native analytical tools are not well configured for real world use. In fact a number of the tools seem to do nothing useful at all! It’s a genuine, and ongoing, frustration in terms of producing rapid or real-time metrics.

[4] Clearly our readers diligently do scan through the entire contents page to the very end! Either that, or the author has well promoted the piece too. We find those authors who share their articles over social media – especially Linked.In, do seem to get increased traction and readership over those that don’t.

[5] Actually, if any of my editorials had appeared in either list I would have been both personally flabbergasted and mildly shocked that the richer content in the actual articles hadn’t gained as much attention!