A Look Back at 2014 in The Scholarly Kitchen

We’re off for the holidays and will see you in 2015. In the meantime, a look back at 2014:

This year The Scholarly Kitchen passed the 5.3 million all time views mark, and cracked 25,000 comments. We’re past our early phase of exponential growth, but should end up with just under 1.5 million views for the year, passing last year’s total by about 30,000. We’ve passed 9,000 Twitter followers, although search engines remain our top referrers, outpacing Twitter by a greater than 10 to 1 ratio. Top search terms are almost all some combination of “PLOS”, “PLOS ONE” and “Impact Factor” (though “eLife Impact Factor”and “David and Goliath Malcolm Gladwell” made the top 10 as well).

Given those search terms, it’s not surprising that our most read articles are discussions of PLOS ONE’s Impact Factor and a review of that Gladwell book. The enormous continuing interest in Impact Factors, even for journals which disavow them, made Phil Davis our most read author this year, given his regular contributions on the subject.

Our top 10 most read articles for 2014:

* Michael Clarke’s post from December of 2013, The End of an Era for Academia.edu and Other Academic Networks? would have come in at number 3 on the list had it been published in 2014.

David Crotty

@davidacrotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.

Discussion

4 Thoughts on "A Look Back at 2014 in The Scholarly Kitchen"

It was a Phil-Kent showdown, with Davis prevailing by a nose for the highest “impact factor” at SK in ’14. Ironic? You decide…. Thanks to all the SK authors for their contributions, and happy holidays.