All 3 entries tagged Popular

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!

Gareth Johnson : 09 Jan 2025 10:06 |  Tags: 2024 Articles Downloaded Hot List Most Popular Retrospective |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

2024 Retrospective: Most Streamed Podcast Episodes

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

With over a dozen episodes to enjoy last year, which podcast episode of the Exchanges Discourse found the most favour with our audience? A surprise or two awaits.

Following on from yesterday’s article, today I’m looking back at the episodes of the Exchanges Discourse Podcast published last year. This means we’re considering all 14 episodes recorded and released to on our Spotify home over 2024.[1] Now, as with all things, those episodes which appeared earlier in the year have a certain advantage over others in the ratings, as there’s more time for them to be picked up by listeners than those appearing towards the end of 2024. However, as you’ll see from the chart below – primacy of release doesn’t always guarantee high ratings!

Position	Episode	Listen	Duration
1	Biochar, Artificial Pollination & Multispecies Justice: In Conversation with Catherine Price	Play	25m24s
2	Energy Poetry One: Harnessing the Wind	Play	29m19s
3	Voices of Transnational Girlhood(s) on Identity, Gender, and Culture: In Conversation with Simona Di Martino	Play	22m23s
4=	Researcher Vulnerability and Physical Impacts: In Conversation with Mia-Marie Hammarlin⁠	Play	39m30s
4=	Postdisciplinarity, Ontologies & Futures: In Conversation with Liam Greenacre	Play	12m58s

So, what was our number 1, most listened to episode for 2024? Well, it’s perhaps no surprise that returning podcast guest Catherine Price’s chat around Biochar and Multispecies released back in January last year is at the top of the heap! Although, while it’s early release will have helped, a lot of its popularity will also be due to Catherine being such a charming and informative guest, making the episode is an especially enjoyable listen. What is surprising though is that as we move down to the number 2 position we find our guest podcast from our poetic Irish colleagues on Harnessing the Wind. As this episode only came along at the end of November, it’s managed to leapfrog past many other longer released episodes to come up the chart quite rapidly. No doubt as 2025 moves along, I wouldn’t be surprised it we weren’t looking at a future all-time top-rated episode here! [2]

Another semi-guest episode comes in at number 3, with my chat with Simona Di Martino on Voices of Transnational Girlhood and Identity. Simona isn’t talking about an article in Exchanges [3], but as one of our former IAS fellows it was still a delight to have Simona on. Clearly looking at the episodes statistics that’s an opinion with which our listening audience agrees. Bringing up the bottom two places of our top five are two jointly fourth placed episodes from Mia-Marie Hammarlin and Liam Greenacre. Liam’s episode, on Postdisciplinarity, has the advantage of being one of those recorded earlier in 2024, so has gained in listeners over the year. By contrast, Swedish academic Mia-Marie’s episode – a timely piece on researcher vulnerability - was only released in early December. I suspect like our energy poetry episode above, this will be another discussion whose ratings will continue to climb over the coming months. I enjoyed both of these chats, but especially my wide-ranging discussions with Mia-Marie, possibly because of the closeness of our own disciplinary alignments.[4]

Incidentally, while it came out in late 2023 and so isn’t appearing in this chart, our highest overall rated episode – of all time – are my discussions with Moroccan scholar, scientist and author Intissar Haddiya. Wonderful to see how popular this one continues to be with our audiences, especially as it was one of the more unusual episodes with Intissar being the subject rather than the author of an article in Exchanges! Maybe we should record more of these kind of episodes – what do you think?

So, there you have it, the highlights of last year’s podcast episodes. Was your favourite episode among them? Were there other lower rated episodes that inspired you instead? And more importantly, as I’m in the process of scheduling the first recordings for 2025 – who should we interview next?

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

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Endnotes

[1] And available on other platforms too.

[2] And we’ll be looking forward to their next submission in the coming weeks for this series too.

[3] More’s the pity, as her work is in a fascinating and revelatory area.

[4] I am, after all, allowed these tiny biases.

Gareth Johnson : 08 Jan 2025 09:50 |  Tags: 2024 Audio Podcast Popular Researchers Retrospective Statistics |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

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.

Position	Article	Year: Volume (Issue)	2022 Position	Type
1	Fedotov, Critical Analysis of the Electric Vehicle Industry: Five forces and strategic action fields.	2022: 10(1)	#8	Article
2	Braddy, Utilizing the Octothorpe (#): Schizoanalytic cartographies recognized in War Games.	2022: 9(2)	New Entry	Article
3	Lewis, The Simultaneity of Loneliness and Popularity in Dear Evan Hansen.	2022: 9(3)	New Entry	Article
4	de Leeuw, 'A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism': Julia Ducournau’s Raw and Bataillean Horror.	2020: 7(2)	#3	Article
5	Benhamou et al., From the Advent of Multiculturalism to the Elision of Race: The Representation of Race Relations in Disney Animated Features (1995-2009)	2014: 2(1)	#2	Criticial Reflection
6	Varwell, A Literature Review of Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation: Lessons for contemporary student engagement.	2022: 10(1)	New Entry	Review Article
7	Price et al., Multispecies, More-Than-Human, Nonhuman, Other-Than-Human: Reimagining idioms of animacy in an age of planetary unmaking.	2023: 10(2)	New Entry	Conversation
8	Schaper, Conquering the Meatspace: The lonely nerd in David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010) and Baran bo Odar’s Who Am I (2014).	2022: 9(3)	New Entry	Article
9	Opaluwah, Participatory Development: A Tool of Pedagogy.	2016: 4(1)	New Entry	Review Article
10	Khair Allah, Review: The Body in Twilight: Representation of the Human Body, Sexuality and Struggle in Contemporary Arab Art.	2023: 11(1)	New Entry	Book Review

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) |  Close comments |  Report a problem