One year of ALD History Blog: statistics shared

Updated 28.10.2016
ALD History Blog was created on October 25, 2015 (it went public on Oct 28). I have shared statistics after 1 month, three months and half a year. This post completes the series and presents statistics after one year of the blog. A recent post was also written of the learnings related to having the blog. Here are some key numbers:

• In total 149 posts have been published before this post. Thus, there have been on average almost three posts per week. 
• The total number of views is above 16 100, giving about 44 views per day on average.   
• Most popular posts, 
• last 7 days: "Term "growth per cycle" (GPC) gaining wider use"
• last 30 days: "Baltic ALD 2016, St. Petersburg: travel notes by Puurunen"
• all times: "ALD 2016: Travel notes"
• Most pageviews, 
• last month: United States > Finland > Japan > France
• all times: United States > Finland > Russia > France
• Most important referring sites: LinkedIn, Twitter, Google 

Then, to the screen captures showing the statistics.  --- I am especially happy of the attention from Japan in the last months. This is because we are still perfecting VPHA's list of early ALD publications up to 1986, and I suspect that we are missing several Japanese publications by Jun-ichi Nishizawa and collaborators. We would need Japanese volunteer(s) in VPHA to get all those works included in the worldwide lists. Those interested to participate in VPHA can contact info@ vph-ald.com (delete the space).

Snapshot of VPHA progress (53% completed)

About a month ago, VPHA entered a new phase as we started actively distributing early ALD publications for reading. This activity has significantly accelerated the progress of VPHA; thank you to everyone who has participated in the work.

The graphs below show a snapshot of the VPHA author and reading situation taken May 14th. Comparison to the previous snapshots from May 5 (for authors) and April 28 (for reading) shows that good progress is taking place.

• At this moment, the total completion status is 53%. The crossover point, where the #comments received became larger than #comments needed, corresponding to >50% reading completion status, was on May 10, 2016.  
• The current number of co-authors is 63. Co-authors come from 18 countries in three continents: Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States. 
• Work is not finished; for example, there still 59 publications in the ALD-history-evolving-file without any comments. 

VPHA progresses and the numbers change quickly. More volunteers are still welcome to join VPHA. It would be nice to say in a future update that we have four, or even five continents involved --- how about e.g. Brazil or Australia?

VPHA author statistics: 55 from 16 countries + space for more (updated 6.5.)

(Updated) VPHA is by its character very international. At the moment we have fiftyfive (55) co-authors from fifteen (16) countries from three (3) continents (Asia, Europe, North America). The map and pie chart below show the co-author distribution between different countries. The previous overview was made in January, when we had 41 co-authors.

New co-authors can still join and be authors of the poster planned to ALD 2016 Ireland (abstract here). Would there be scientists with interest in the history of ALD e.g. in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, China, India, Japan, Norway, Portugal, Taiwan?

ALD History Blog is half a year - statistics shared

ALD History Blog was initiated on October 25, 2016---exactly six months ago. To celebrate ALD History Blog's half-a-year journey, I want to share some statistics blog's reading. Similar posts were written also when the blog was three months and one month old.

When I started the blog, I had no experience on blogging, only Jonas Sundqvist's invaluable BALD Engineering ALD News blog as an example. I am very happy that I eventually dared to take the step and start the blog. Before entering the statistics, I would like to briefly review some of the learnings.
(i) For the progress of the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA, vph-ald.com), the blog has of course been instrumental. We would not have the same good progress without it.
(ii) The blog has given me the opportunity to learn of what it is to have a science project blog, and how one can attract attention to it. I have learnt how important it is to share information of new posts in professional social media. For new posts, which have not been shared this way, half a day can pass without one single person viewing the post. For new posts shared in Twitter and LinkedIn, in turn, readers appear instantaneously. Sharing in Twitter, systematically with a relevant hashtag (#VPHA #ALDep), has certainly further increased the audience of the posts.
(iii) Somewhat after creating this blog, I created a separate Twitter account (@aldhistoryblog) for sharing the posts, thus no more having a need to share them directly through my personal account (@rlpuu). I think that was a good step, helping to keep things organized. Would I in the future again be in charge of some larger scientific project/unit, I would certainly again consider setting up a separate Twitter account as a communications channel.

Then, to the ALD History Blog numbers during the first 6 months of the blog (numbers as of as of April 24, 2016).

Graphical big picture of VPHA ALD history reading status

With this post, I want to share the "graphical big picture" and describe the current status of the VPHA reading: how is the reading progressing vs time, how many authors there are from different countries, and how these numbers have evolved with time.

The four plots below show that from December 2015 to January 2016, there was good progress taking place, reading progressed significantly, and new authors joined (we are now 52, from 15 countries). Thereafter, reading has slowed down and little progress has been booked. Obviously, we need to get the reading to proceed again, to be able to make a good report at Ireland ALD 2016. (Within a few days we should know, if it is a talk or a poster.)

To help the VPHA ALD history reading to progress, I will publish new blog posts containing list again of articles with zero; one; two; and three+ comments. These should follow shortly. I hope that as many VPHA co-authors as possible could in the next weeks pick a few articles to read, preferably with zero or one comments, and share the comments in the ALD-history-evolving-file. 

Article reading statistics + articles with zero comments

This post shares recent trends in VPHA reading. Main findings:

• The number of comments obtained has been nicely increasing since December 2015. We still face a serious challenge, though, in getting the planned three comments per article by something like May 2016.
• There are at the moment as many as ninety (90) articles listed with no comments yet. 

In the weeks to come, we should try to prioritize the reading and commenting of articles with no comments yet (although people can and it is useful also continue to read other papers, too). A list of publications with zero comments is shown below. Most of the remaining articles with zero comments are available only in Russian. Most are journal articles but some are conference papers and there are many theses, too. Some Finnish theses are also still included in this list with zero comments, and there are a few publications in English, German, and Bulgarian remaining, too.

 

ALD history blog is three months old - statistics shared

Today, it is exactly three months since the ALD History Blog http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi was created. After several months of hesitating (related LinkedIn post, March 14, 2015), I started the blog on October 25, 2015, as the need to share the progress in Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) and in general in understanding the history of ALD become overwhelming with the ALD Russia workshop (travel report here). In hindsight, I am glad that I started the blog: there has been plenty of topics to write about (I'd write more if I had more time) and the blog has found an audience, with an all-time average of 44 pageviews per day. For communicating the advances of VPHA to the virtual project group efficiently, the blog is irreplaceable.

Below, I share the all-time (=three-month) statistics of the ALD History Blog as enabled by Blogger: Overview, Post statistics, Traffic sources, and Audience.  Top-five countries in pageviews, in descending order, are: Finland, United States, Germany, France, and Russia. Recognized important referring sites are, for example, Twitter, LinkedIn, BALD Engineering blog and european-ald.net.

Last, I want to share my latest topic of hesitation. Should/could VPHA have its own page in Wikipedia? Opinions; pros and cons? You can share your views e.g. in discussion chain started a few days ago in Twitter.  

Top 10 viewer countries of the ALD History Blog all time Oct 25, 2015 to Jan 25, 2016.

New type of statistics for ALD-history-evolving-file

Good news: I have learnt how one can collect article reading statistics from the VPHA-reading-overview-file with Google spreadsheets functions. This makes it easy to visualise the status of commenting, whether individual papers have 0, 1, 2, 3, or 3+ comments. Below you find the current situation. With time, I plan to report on trends on how the reading evolves.

Statistics of the number of VPHA comments per ALD publication, on the basis of VPHA-reading-overview-file, as of 7.1.2016. Made with Google spreadsheets. 

Countries and VPHA reading statistics, 2016-01-06

The number of co-authors in the ALD-history-evolving-file is now 41, from 12 countries (Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia, Sweden, The Netherlands, Turkey). The countries are highlighted in the next map and the exact number of authors per country is shown in the pie graph below.

Author map of ALD-history-evolving-file, January 6, 2016. Shades of grey show countries with VPHA co-authors; the darker the colour, the more there are participating co-authors. Map created with Google spreadsheets.

Pie graph of authors in the ALD-history-evolving-file, January 6, 2016. Created with Google spreadsheets. 

Statistics after one month of the ALD History Blog

It is now about a month since this blog (http//aldhistory.blogspot.fi) was publicly announced (Oct 28, related post). In the short time, the blog has evolved in many ways, including getting an own logo. The blog has found its early audience.

In this post, I want to share with you information on the statistics behind the blog: where do the readers come from geographically, what are the sources linking to the blog, and what are the most popular blog topics. I can share all this information thanks to the excellent statistics that Blogger automatically collects.

The next image shows an overview of the statistics from during the previous month. The total number of pageviews has been slightly more than 1000 on a month's time. The number of views per day varies; new posts attract most visitors. The highest number of views, 189 per day on November 20, came on the day when the blog's Twitter companion was created.

Overview of the viewing statistics of the ALD History Blog for the last month (Oct 29 - Nov 27). 

1000 pageviews in the ALD History Blog

In less than a month, the ALD History Blog has received 1000 pageviews. The exact 1000-views moment has been captured in the image below. The fact that the number of views rises this fast signifies that there is a need for the ALD History Blog and it probably fills some kind of a gap. The latest peak in the statistics is from yesterday, and it originates from the creation of the Twitter companion of the ALD History Blog, @aldhistoryblog, https://twitter.com/aldhistoryblog. 

Later, I intend to share some more detailed viewing statistics. Already I can tell that the Top 5 countries in the viewing statistics are (in this order): Finland, USA, Germany, Russia, and France. 

Screen capture from the ALD History Blog, November 21, 2015.

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Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) - in atmosphere of Openness, Respect, and Trust