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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]
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 1st January to 31st 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!
February 01, 2023
Subscribe to the New Exchanges Newsletter
Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/announcement/view/44
There's a new regular way to get a monthly update on Exchanges direct to your inbox - a newsletter!
I'm delighted to announce there's now an Exchanges newsletter which people can subscribe to online. Each month the newsletter will highlight recent developments from the journal, along with a reminder of current and forthcoming calls for content, opportunities to get involved and all the very latest on our podcast series too.
The newsletter will, mostly, be reusing the content we post to the IAS' monthly newsletter - so if you're already subscribed to that, then you probably will be up to date on things. But if not, and you'd like the make sure you're always fully appraised of everything going on with Exchanges - then signing up to the newsletter is a great way to achieve this.
Full details of how to subscribe are here: https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/announcement/view/44
For interest in this issue of the newsletter:
- Focus in on top articles and episodes
- Review of Exchanges workshops and events
- News about the Exchanges Discourse podcast
- Reminder of open calls for papers
- Somewhat meta-textually...news on the new newsletter
- Highlighting Exchanges' social media instances
- Plus a regular guide on managing your list membership and what Exchanges is all about.
So, if you don't want to miss out on everything to do with Exchanges, and want to know more - subscribe today!
March 10, 2022
Talking Tech Wish–List
With a little more time on his hands at last, the editor takes a wander through his technical and platform wish-list to assess how things have changed over the past few years.
Today I’ve been taking the time to review, reformat and refresh my technical wish-list for Exchanges. It’s been a veritable stroll down memory lane as this was originally one of the earliest documents I drew up when I first came into post. My intentions at the time were to clarify, in my own head at least, those aspects of the title where I thought it was lacking and could benefit from some upgrading. Some of the early comments to myself are perhaps a little naive, a few apposite and even fewer maybe even a smidge visionary [1].
Today, I will confess this is not a document I’ve had too much time to much work on over the past couple of years. Certainly, since early 2020 keeping all of the routine journal plates/wheels/cogs [2] etc., spinning has taken a goodly chunk of my time. Glancing at my document control notes, it seems the last time I did any updating was way back in the early summer of 2021. Now I’m blessed (huzzah – thank you lovely IAS!) with a little more time to devote to the journal, it seems only right and fitting that I return to a guiding document too long neglected.
Reading through it, through and completely, for the first time in years, numerous elements of I was once keen to implement on the journal have changed in status when viewed through the lens of today. In fact, I can reclassify them in one of three different ways. Firstly, for a lucky few they’ve actually been implemented, sometimes as the result of a platform update or a policy change, and occasionally through direct action by myself or the lovely technical team. These are easily most gratifying to spot, as it demonstrates how Exchanges today, is no longer the Exchanges I took on back in 2018.
Secondly there are those, after taking account of the journals evolving policy and practice direction, or indeed developments in the wider scholarly publishing world, are no longer relevant. Indeed, it is possible to observe a divergence from what I thought would be crucial back then, to today when they are no longer of great import or relevance. In some cases, it isn’t that they’re no longer of any value, but in contrast to other, more salient and pressing priorities, they simply aren’t worth devoting any time towards. After all, all those various spinning objects haven’t entirely retreated into the distance thanks to my longer hours! And so, with no guilt, they can be moved to the deprioritised pile.
The third category though, these are those developmental and aspirational goals I had for the journal which still continue to burn brightly in my mind. True, a fair number of these pending developments will be subject to a long conversation with our platform hosts at Warwick in order to achieve. Certainly, with the way our host and platform are configured there aren’t simple things which I could move forward on alone. For example they may have implications for the other titles hosted on Warwick University Press Journals, so can’t be adopted in isolation, no matter how much Exchanges might desire them [3]. A few more though, these are wish-list items which require action beyond the confines of Warwick alone.
These are those aspects which require pressure being brought to bear on external actors. Again, we are but one small open-access journal in a sea of hundreds of thousands, which means it would be unlikely I’d be able to make much headway on achieving these goals alone. I had hoped the local journals family would be a good source of collective agency, but in the last year with various staffing moves and changes the coherency of this group has rather evaporated. Just as it was finally getting up steam too - if mixing steam with evaporation isn’t too strained a metaphor to adopt here!
Then we come to the last few items, and this is where I can feel myself getting a little more excited. Why? Well, because these are things I can, resplendent in my additional weekly hours, begin to make some degree of ingress on. Tease that I am [4], I’m won’t share details of these our potentially achievable aspirations, but I can reveal one of them concerns our journal audience’s interests. For now, I’ll say no more, but would strongly suggest you keep an eye on the editorial coming out in the next issue of Exchanges for a few minor revelations in this respect.
I am pleased, in closing though, to note that while there is but a single, minor, niggle unresolved but scheduled for swift action over the coming weeks by our tech team. The rest of the platform issues we’ve experienced over the years – all thankfully relegated to the ‘completed’ column. That, in the very least, is bringing me some measure of satisfaction in reading through my wish list today. Not to mention, reminding me of how grateful I am to our tech team for their ongoing work behind the scenes.
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[1] Scarily so – I would have to do a lot of policy and process work to make them work, even if the platform supported them!
[2] Insert your preferred circular linguistic contrivance here
[3] Mutter, mutter, commericial indexes, mutter
[4] You’d probably be horrified by how ungrammatical some of these notes were if I did.