Many of you often ask about our readership: what goes viral, who’s getting lots of reads, what topics are attracting attention and who’s reading The Conversation?
As we celebrate our 3-year anniversary, here’s a look behind the metrics with some of our “most” lists since our launch in March 2011.
Most-read articles (reads)
- Six myths about vaccination and why they’re wrong, by Rachael Dunlop, UTS (827K)
- No, you’re not entitled to your opinion, by Pat Stokes, Deakin (617K)
- Ordering the vegetarian meal? There’s more animal blood on your hands, by Mike Archer, UNSW (503K)
- Why some kids can’t spell and why spelling tests won’t help, by Misty Adoniou, Canberra (405K)
- After 400 years, mathematicians find a new class of solid shapes, interviewed Stan Schein UCLA, David Craven Uni of Birmingham (380K)
- More data storage? Here’s how to fit 1,000 terabytes on a DVD, by Min Gu, Yaoyu Cao, Zongsong Gan, Swinburne (325K)
- Teleportation just got easier – but not for you, unfortunately, by Ben Buchler, ANU (230K)
- Monday’s medical myth: you can’t mix antibiotics with alcohol by Michael Vagg, Deakin (230K)
Most-read authors (with 400,000+ reads)
- Michelle Grattan, Uni Canberra
- Rachael Dunlop, UTS
- Patrick Stokes, Deakin
- Michael Vagg, Deakin
- Rob Brooks, UNSW
- Mike Archer, UNSW
- Misty Adoniou, Canberra
- Simon Redfern, Cambridge
- David Glance, UWA
- Andrew Bissette, Oxford
Most-read Universities (total readership in millions)
- University of Melbourne (4.7)
- Monash University (3.6)
- University of Sydney (3.5)
- University of New South Wales (3.5)
- University of Canberra (2.9)
- Australian National University (2.6)
- University of Technology, Sydney (2.2)
- Deakin University (1.9)
- University of Western Australia (1.8)
- University of Queensland (1.8)
- Griffith University (1.3)
- RMIT University (1.3)
- La Trobe University (1.2)
- University of Adelaide (1.0)
Authors and member universities can access their dashboards for further metrics.
Who’s reading The Conversation & where?
Our audience has doubled since 12 months ago.
Our monthly audience is now 1.5 million unique visitors, with a subsequent reach through our Creative Commons republications of 5m unique page views.
As well as reading our content on The Conversation, you’re also reading it elsewhere across the online and print media. 87% of all articles are republished elsewhere, and a massive 8,000 websites republish our content, including: ABC, SBS, The Guardian, Fairfax, NewsLtd, BBC, The Huffington Post, NZ Herald, Mashable, The Atlantic, Salon, phys.org, Lifehacker, Mamamia, Business Insider, The New Daily, Mumbrella, Business Spectator, Women’s Agenda, and many more.
You’re also listening to our academics – a global knowledge network of 10K+ working collaboratively with 40 editors across Australia and with our sister edition in the UK – on radio, or seeing them elsewhere in the media: 43% of authors receive further media follow up as a result of writing with us.
And about you, our readers: 75% of you are under 45 years old, 90% of you have an undergraduate degree or higher, and more than 80% of you are from outside academia (this is important for us because we want to share expertise with the public, disseminating ideas more broadly, and not be an academic-academic channel). Around 35% of you read the site from outside of Australia. Read more about our audience.
In 3 years we’ve gone someway to achieving our goal of unlocking academic expertise and sharing it with the public. There’s more for us to do.
We continue to spend no budget on marketing or advertising, instead relying on our content being discovered and shared by you. So, if you haven’t yet done so, please sign up and encourage others to sign up to our newsletter, Twitter and Facebook pages. And start a conversation worth having.