RE: Significance of BMJ figures

[<Toby.GREEN@oecd.org>]

2/3 visit for the first time, making an cumulative sum of perhaps 
two million new visitors annually. Astounding figures, perhaps. 
But it begs the question: why don't they come back a second time?

Toby Green
Head of Publishing
OECD Publishing
Public Affairs and Communications Directorate


-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of David Goodman
Sent: 27 August, 2007 4:08 AM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Significance of BMJ figures

The significance depends on how carefully you look at it:

Some arithmetic:

Corrected for response rate, that's 35,254 unique individuals 
during a single week. Approximately 2/3 of them are visiting for 
the first time, which gives 36,111 new visitors, which amounts to 
960,000 new visitors a year.  This figures are for what has been 
deliberately selected as the slowest week of the year, July 
13-20.  Assuming that average activity is twice that, this is 2 
million people a year.

About half the total visitors (including the medically related
80%) did not have subscription access---either personal or
institutional-- to the full site.

If we add "other", which seems reasonable in this context, that
would be another 50%. (Journalists are a separate category, not
included)

2 to 3 million people a year. A twofold increase per year would
mean 4 - 6 million next year. These numbers are about double what
I would have guessed.

The amount of the demand looks a little different when you look
at people instead of percentages.

2-3 million a year. One single journal. Astounding.

David Goodman, Ph.D., M.L.S.
dgoodman@princeton.edu

----- Original Message -----
From: Sally Morris <sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thursday, August 23, 2007 3:05 pm
Subject: RE: e: PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu

> Apologies for this much delayed response (due to temporary
> unavailability of the BMJ statistics during their website revamp)
>
> Peter Banks (whose sound good sense we all miss sadly) may not have
> interviewed 'homemakers in Houston', but anyone can have a look at the
> usage information on the British Medical Journal's website (see
> http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/about-bmj/visitor-
> statistics/questionnaire).
> Year after year, just 2% of usage has been from patients, and 4%
> from the general public;  this year the figures jumped to 6% and
> 5% respectively.  However, this still does not exactly look like
> overwhelming demand to me...
>
> Sally
>
> Sally Morris
> Email:  sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk