Most Downloaded Articles of 2023

Follow-up to Top of the Articles: Exchanges’ Most Downloaded Articles 2022 from Exchanges Reflections: Interdisciplinary Editor Insights

The annual review of the most downloaded articles brings some new surprises and old favourites to the fore.

Welcome to 2024, a year which I suspect will be both a busy one and evolutionary one for the journal. As it traditional now, I like to start the new year by looking back at those articles which have been the most heavily accessed in the past year on the Exchanges site [1]. I always run off a report drawing this information together each October/November for our departmental IAS annual report. Naturally though, that doesn’t take into account those readers who might spend their winter holidays reading the journal! [2]. Hence, what follows is the definitive most accessed chart for the past year on Exchanges.

The following are based on downloads of the final article PDFs, rather than accesses to the top-level landing (summary) page. Consequently, they represent how many times the actual article itself has been accessed by readers.

Looking at the chart I can see how once again we have a very healthy range of new entries appearing. Many of these are from the past two years of Exchanges’ publications, with perhaps a smaller than normal smattering of old ‘classics’ in the list. That said, last year’s #8 has leapt up – considerably – to become our number one most accessed article of 2023. A round of applause for that article and its author! [3] It was also nice to see our newest submission format (book reviews) having a day in the sunshine with one of these articles popping up in our top 10 for 2023. I think that clearly demonstrates this kind of article is a welcome addition to Exchanges, from our readers' perspective.

You can check out the statistics for yourself this and every article if you are interested – we always make the last 12 months of information publicly available. It is, you will see, a long way clear of the second placed article – which indicates a very healthy and laudable level of readership.

In contrast to last year where there was a fine balance between peer-reviewed and editorially reviewed formats, this year the top 10 chart is very heavily dominated by peer-reviewed publications (7:3): which must be very rewarding for authors and reviewers alike given the long hours they will have worked on these pieces. That isn’t to say it isn’t challenging to get one of the editorially-reviewed pieces into print, but it is a much longer labour for the peer-reviewed texts!

Will any of these articles appear in 2024’s most downloaded articles chart? I bet a couple at least will, but we shall have to see what this year brings. With potentially 5 new issues of Exchanges scheduled for publication this year, all bets for now are well and truly off. We shall have to see who next year’s top dogs are in another 365 or so days. [4]

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Endnotes

[1] I did give away a few hard copies of the journal, but not to any degree that would have impacted on these statistics.

[2] I am not entirely kidding – I know we had an article submission on Christmas eve for example, long after I’d ‘downed tools’ for the year.

[3] I should note the author did an excellent job of sharing their article on social media over a protracted period last year, which I suspect helped them no end. My advice to authors – never be shy of sharing your research publications via your socials!!!

[4] There are an estimated 60-70 articles anticipated to appear across these issues, so there will be a lot of competition.

Gareth Johnson : 10 Jan 2024 11:02 |  Tags: Articles Charts Download High Metrics Popular Scores Top |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem