A brief look back at our record-breaking 4th year (a big thanks to all our readers!).

The headline news for 2019 was that, for the first time, we achieved 1,000+ page views EVERY SINGLE MONTH for an entire calendar year. Nine of the twelve months recorded their highest-ever totals. Huge thanks to everyone who read our postings, shared them, liked them, and commented on them. It’s wonderful to know that our content is of interest.

Also for the first time, a total of three postings broke the 1,000 views barrier – our salute to the former editor of eLife, Randy Schekman (HERE), our “how to” guide to technical replicates, biological replicates, and independent experiments (HERE), and of course the all-conquering “Cell Biologist’s Guide to Fine Dining” (HERE), which is closing in on an unbelievable 14,000 page views all by itself.

We’ve continued to branch out into other media, with a 4th Opinion piece being published in EMBO Reports (HERE), and a first Opinion piece in eLife (HERE). We’ve also maintained monthly cross-postings to the FEBS Network.

We appear to be branching out geographically, too – see below for the map of our 2019 readership.

As with previous years, the bulk of our traffic is coming from the USA, the UK, and Germany, but those three countries accounted for a lower proportion (58%) of our total reads than before. If you stopped by for the first time, we hope you liked it, and we hope you continue to come back!

Our monthly rates were also good, with averages of 1,520 page views and 955 visitors. The average number of words per posting (now 890) was also its highest – whether this reflects greater thought or less editorial control you’ll have to decide for yourselves…

In terms of all-time totals, we also recorded our 50,000th page view (in July), and welcomed our 30,000th visitor (in October).

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, all these numbers are still quite small  – but we are also a very small and very niche operation, which is why we’re so thrilled at the success we’re having. We only produce original content, we’re not closely tied to any particular research field or community, we don’t put out clickbait, and we don’t aggressively promote ourselves either (each posting gets a single Tweet and a single Facebook posting, and that’s it). All text is written by Brooke, and all original artwork is drawn or painted by Oliver.

As such, a huge thanks again to you all for your interest and support, and we very much hope you continue to follow us into 2020 and beyond. Don’t forget that you can sign up to receive alerts whenever we post (once per calendar week is the target).

You keep reading, we’ll keep reflecting.

Cheers,

Brooke & Oliver