JOE by the Numbers 2011

JOE by the Numbers 2011

As usual, this is the time of year I report on the previous year's submission rate and readership statistics. And I announce JOE's current acceptance rate. I also call attention to one of the most interesting features of the JOE site (and one that should interest many of you, too).

Submission Rate

JOE received 293 submissions in 2011. That's 12 more than in 2010 and our second highest submission rate.

Readership Statistics

In 2011, there were 1,112,315 "visitors" to the JOE site who viewed 2,380,463 pages. JOE is now using newer statistics collection software that better filters "bots" and search engine crawlers. You can find readership statistics from 1998 through 2011 and definitions of terms at <http://www.joe.org/website-statistics/index.php>.

Also in 2011, JOE attracted readers from ~ 217 nations and territories. Among the top 10 nations and territories accessing JOE, the United States, not surprisingly, was number one, with 553,983 visits, and Germany was number 10, with 15,419 visits. You can find these nations and territories listed at <http://www.joe.org/website-statistics/nations.php>.

Acceptance Rate

In 2003, we started collecting the data that would allow us to post an annual acceptance rate for JOE, but posting annual acceptance rates caused confusion. It also failed to account for submissions that were submitted in one year but reviewed in another. We now have enough reliable data from enough years to post a single rate.

JOE's current acceptance rate is 27.8%. (This figure is the average of data from 2007 through 2011.) JOE is a rigorous journal in which Extension professionals and other scholars can be proud to be published.

The Top 50 Most Read Articles

You can find the list of the Top 50 Most Read Articles in 2011 as well as lists from 2005 to 2010 at <http://www.joe.org/about-joe-website-statistics.php>. Included are indications of which articles are new to the list and how the articles ranked in the previous year. There's a lot of movement in the Top 50 lists from year to year. For example, one article on the 2011 list rose 37 places in the ranking, and another rose 24 places. It all makes for interesting reading and potentially valuable information.

You'll see that there are 12 new entries on the 2011 list. Three of the new entries on the 2011 Top-50 list are articles published in the 1990s. This reinforces what I said in my December 2009 Editor's Page about "a singular advantage of Web-based journals like JOE"—that all of the articles still "live" and "speak."

These lists are certainly not a reflection on the quality of the JOE articles that "made the lists" as opposed to those that didn't. But they do say a lot about the degree of interest readers from around the world have in some of the topics discussed in JOE.

February JOE

Partnerships have been discussed in many JOE articles over the years, and the February issue has two notable additions: the second Commentary, "Keys to Successful Programming: Incentives in Multi-Institutional Partnerships," and the first Feature, "Leveraging Partnerships to Achieve High Impact: Lessons from Wildlife Field Days."

And then there are the all-important issues of evaluation and assessment. The authors of eight articles in the issue regard the issues of sufficient importance to have one of those two terms in their titles. Of course, many of the other articles involve evaluation and assessment, as well.

And, as an editor, I would feel remiss not to mention the Feature, "Using Interesting Text to Communicate Complex Natural Resources Issues." Using interesting text in Extension publications? Now there's an idea!

A number of other articles also focus on how we communicate with our audiences, including "The Development of a Food Safety Brochure for Families: The Use of Formative Evaluation and Plain Language Strategies" and "Text to Speech: A 4-H Model of Accessibility and Inclusion."

There are also articles on helping people with home-based businesses, reaching Hispanic audiences, and working with older adults.

In the issue there are 36 articles in all—and all well worth reading