Metadata Monday

On Thursday, I made my 200th post on the New Archaeology of the Mediterranean blog. So, I thought it would be a good time for a metadata Monday post.

Over those 200 posts, I’ve enjoyed approximately 56 page views per day. This is up from the 50 or so page views of day recorded through May of this year. My new blog still is far behind my old blog in terms of number of page views per day, but I suspect some of that is related to different tools used to measure page views on the two different platforms.  I do wish that WordPress.com offered a more robust set of Metadata or could sync with Google Analytics.

In any event, here are some specifics:

The 20 most popular post in overall page views are:

Archaeology and Man-camps in Western North Dakota (531)
Teaching Graduate Historiography: A Final Syllabus (362)
Pompeii in the 21st Century Replay (326)
Lists and Ranking of Archaeology Journals (281)
The Future of the Computer Lab (203)
The Fortifications of Athens (128)
Simplicity, Minimalism, and the Ancient Ascetic (113)
Christianization and Churches in the Peloponnese (106)
Job in Classics at University of North Dakota (81)
Methods, Questions, and Digital Archaeology (75)
Pots to People in Late Roman Cyprus (75)
More than four reasons to teach more than four classes (sometimes) (71)
Modern Abandonment, Squatters, and Late Antiquity (68)
Digital Humanities and Craft (67)
Teaching Thursday Trifecta (62)
Postcolonial Archaeology (61)
Theory and Medieval Archaeology (60)
Digitizing Theses on North Dakota (59)
The Poor Little Sherd (58)
Blogging and Peer Review (58)

In terms of hits per day, the list is pretty similar:

Pompeii in the 21st Century Replay (2.17)
Archaeology and Man-camps in Western North Dakota (2.01)
Lists and Ranking of Archaeology Journals (1.97)
Teaching Graduate Historiography: A Final Syllabus (1.38)
The Future of the Computer Lab (.95)
The Fortifications of Athens (.80)
Thesis Defense: Neoplantonism and Monotheism in Late Antique Rome (.70)
Job in Classics at University of North Dakota (.70)
Simplicity, Minimalism, and the Ancient Ascetic (.49)
The Poor Little Sherd (.47)
Postcolonial Archaeology (.44)
Christianization and Churches in the Peloponnese (.39)
Blogging and Peer Review (.35)
Pots to People in Late Roman Cyprus (.32)
More than four reasons to teach more than four classes (sometimes) (.31)
Theory and Medieval Archaeology (.30)
Modern Abandonment, Squatters, and Late Antiquity (.30)
Three Observations about Publishing and the Blog (.30)
Teaching Thursday Trifecta (.26)
Digital Humanities and Craft (.26)

The most visited posts tend to be those linked to specifically from elsewhere (which is hardly a shock). “Lists and Rankings of Archaeology Journals” was linked to from the Chronicle of Higher Education as was “More than Four Reasons to Teach More than Four Classes (sometimes)”.  “Blogging and Peer Review” and “Three Observations about Publishing and the Blog” were part of Colleen Morgan’s Blogging Archaeology project.  “Pompeii in the 21st Century” benefitted links from various Pompeii related blogs. “Simplicity, Minimalism, and the Ancient Ascetic” was noted on a popular blog for contemporary minimalists. In contrast, “Archaeology and Man-camps in Western North Dakota” captures views from search engine queries on this popular and controversial topic.

Despite the occasional boost that a high-profile site can give to an individual post, the most consistent referrers to my blog are blogs penned by colleagues:

Archaeology of the Mediterranean World (my old blog) (953)
Surprised by Time (430)
Paperless Archaeology (358)
Objects, Buildings, Situations (306)
Research in Late Antiquity (253)
Google (219)
Twitter (various) (197)
Google Reader (163)
Facebook (104)
Middle Savagery (95)
Corinthian Matters (55)

I hope I drive as much traffic to their blogs as they drive to mine!  One of the great things about blogging, is that I know far more about who reads my blog (and how it is discovered) than who reads my contributions to traditional scholarship. Metadata captures the contours of the social, intellection, and professional networks in which my blog posts circulate. In other words, if you like my blog, you should check out the blogs that refer to it.  And if you read my blog, thanks!

Lists and Ranking of Archaeology Journals

I am sure that I’m behind the curve on this, but I’ve become fascinated with the Australian Government’s effort to list and rank journals in each discipline.  (The list was the topic of an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education this past week). I understand the evils that this kind of system can create and the problems and issues associated with any effort to standardize the creation of knowledge. At the same time I also appreciate these kinds of lists as historical artifacts that can tell us something about how our fields are understood.

So, as I attempted to avoid grading that angry stack of student papers staring at me from across the office, I began to mess with the list of journals.  The Australian Research Council evaluation system seems very complex, but it distills its finding down into a four tiered ranking (here is the guide in .pdf):

A*
Typically an A* journal would be one of the best in its field or subfield in which to publish and would typically cover the entire field/subfield. Virtually all papers they publish will be of a very high quality. These are journals where most of the work is important (it will really shape the field) and where researchers boast about getting accepted. Acceptance rates would typically be low and the editorial board would be dominated by field leaders, including many from top institutions.
A
The majority of papers in a Tier A journal will be of very high quality. Publishing in an A journal would enhance the author’s standing, showing they have real engagement with the global research community and that they have something to say about problems of some significance. Typical signs of an A journal are lowish acceptance rates and an editorial board which includes a reasonable fraction of well known researchers from top institutions.
B
Tier B covers journals with a solid, though not outstanding, reputation. Generally, in a Tier B journal, one would expect only a few papers of very high quality. They are often important outlets for the work of PhD students and early career researchers. Typical examples would be regional journals with high acceptance rates, and editorial boards that have few leading researchers from top international institutions.
C
Tier C includes quality, peer reviewed, journals that do not meet the criteria of the higher tiers.

In other words, there is are a bunch of things going on here and some of it involves the extent to which a researcher “boasts about getting accepted” and “lowish acceptance rates”.  Journal rankings not only reflect the quality of the journal, but also its scope (and indirectly the extent to which the field is fragmented or specialized). 

Just for fun, I decided to look at my field of archaeology. I imported the journal ranking list to Access and started to crunch the numbers.  First thing that I noticed is that there are a tremendous number of archaeology journals. In fact, with 297 journals, the discipline ranks in the top 25 of the 700+ investigated 135 disciplinary groupings produced by the ARC. (I did not really consider journals with archaeology listed as a second field… I have to eventually get grading done!) Those journals listed with archaeology as their primary field represent a combination of world, Classical, and regional archaeological publications.  Among these journals 5 earned the rank of A*: Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, American Antiquity, American Journal of Archaeology, Journal of Archaeological Science, and Britannia: A journal of Romano-British and kindred studies.  With a mere 1.68% of its journals earning a A* ranking, Archaeology ranked 6th lowest among the disciplines listed. When you control for disciplines with fewer than 100 journals, it ranks 4th behind only Social Work, Zoology, and Geology.  To make up for this, just under 20% of archaeology journals received an “A” ranking and this places the field in the top 10 of fields with more than 100 journals between Historical Studies and Political Science. 42% of archaeology journals received a B ranking placing the field in the top 5 of disciplines. Relatively few archaeology journals received a C ranking. It ranked in the bottom 5 of disciplines with C ranked journals at 36%. Studies in Creative Arts and Writing found a stunning 86% of this fields journals received a C ranking and 77% of Zoology journals.

First, whether one buys into the logic of these rankings or not, I think the distribution of journals in the field reflects more or less my impression of the quality and character of journals in the field. The disciplinary divisions in archaeology ensure that we produce very few A* journals that are universally recognized as high quality outlets for publications by every scholar identifying oneself as an archaeology. The significant quantity of A and B ranked journals most likely represents the fragmentation of the field into thriving and competitive subfields which, in turn, produce good quality journals for their constituencies. Hesperia and the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology received A rankings, the International Journal of Historical Archaeology received a B. An important journal (to me) as the Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus earned a C ranking which considering its regional scope and sometimes uneven quality of submission seemed fair, although in my field the RDAC is still an important journal of record for archaeologists working on the island.

Of course, the disturbing thing for someone in the field of archaeology is that, if the day would come when we pitted against our colleagues in other fields and judged by the number of publications in A* journals, archaeologists might well come up short. Of course, access to A* would be mitigated by the number of publishing scholars in a profession, the rater of publication, and the number of articles published by each journal annually.  At the same time, it is curious that some fields like Biological Sciences (16), Microbiology (10), and Cultural Studies (13) could find 10% of their journals ranked A* whereas archaeology would find only 1.68% (5).  (My poor colleagues in Social Work have only 1 journal of 112 ranked A*!).

A Metadata Monday

It has been about four months since I have moved to the New Archaeology of the Mediterranean World and over that time I’ve made about 100 posts.  So I thought it might be a good time to present some metadata.

Since my first post on December 19, 2010, the blog has seen 7,055 page views for an average of 50 per day.  That total is gradually increasing as I post more content.

The vast majority of these page views are of the front page.  Some posts, however, had direct links or appear in search engines.

Pompey in the 21st Century Replay: 20.6 per day
The Fortifications of Athens: 4.1 per day
The Future of the Computer Lab: 2.48 per day
Blogging and Peer Review: 2.15
Friday Varia and Quick Hits (April 22 edition): 1.81
Archaeology and Man Camps in Western North Dakota: 1.4
Some Events and Awards (April 20): 1.22
Three Observations about Publishing and the Blog: 1.17
Teaching Graduate Historiography: A Final Syllabus: 1.09
More than Four Reasons to Teach More than Four Classes: 0.8
Simplicity, Minimalism, and the Ancient Ascetic: 0.78
Five Things about Online Teaching: 0.78
Practicing Prepared Procrastination: 0.71
A Teaching Thursday Trifecta: 0.70  
More on Academic Publishing and Blogs: 0.68
Pots to People in Late Roman Cyprus: 0.62
Blogging and the Public Face of Archaeology: 0.59
Christianization and Churches in the Peloponnesus: 0.59
Some thoughts on Unlocking the Gates: 0.54
Modern Abandonment, Squatters, and Late Antiquity: 0.53

The main referring sites are:

The [Original] Archaeology of the Mediterranean World
Surprised by Time (Diana Gilliland Wright)
Objects-Buildings-Situations (Kostis Kourelis)
Research News in Late Antiquity
Google
Paperless Archaeology (John Wallrodt)
Twitter 
Middle Savagery (Colleen Morgan)
Blogging Pompeii
Facebook 
Corinthian Matters (David Pettegrew)

Unfortunately wordpress.com who hosts this little blog does not offer integration with Google Analytics or any other comprehensive analytics software, so it is not possible to retrieve other metadata nuggets, like browsers, operating system, or even location! Since most bloggers are a bit obsessive about their statistics, it is surprising that a more developed analytics package has not appeared.

Metadata Monday

I haven’t put up any metadata for a while, so I thought that a snowy Monday morning would be as good a time as any.  One of the downsides of moving to a blog hosted by WordPress.com is that they do not provide as robust a set of statistical data and so far have not provided a way to integrate with Google Analytics.

Also it seems like they record fewer page views and visits than Typepad did.  In fact, Typepad consistently recorded more visits than Google Analytics for the same blog so their algorithm for determining visits must be exceptionally sensitive.

For fun, I decided to compare the page views over a 28 day stretch from December 20th to January 16th. I picked this span because my new blog saw its first 1000 (1030 to be exact) page views.  It is also a time when people tend not to visit blogs very often choosing (I imagine) to spend time with families and away from the office and work. I also tend to blog less regularly at the holidays.  So this period of time is least likely to be distorted by a sensational blog post (cough, cough) and is most likely to reflect he baseline visibility of the blog.

Here is a pretty dense chart showing the trends over this period from 2007-2008 to 2010-2011.

Here are the figures:

2007-2008: Total Views: 1081. Average: 38.6. 
2008-2009: Total Views: 2317. Average: 82.8. 
2009-2010: Total Views: 2369. Average: 84.6. 
2010-2011 (Old Blog): Total Views: 1668. Average: 59.6. 
2010-2011 (New Blog): Total Views: 1030. Average: 36.8.

As you can see, the new blog (despite the less generous stats provided by WordPress.com) has some catching up to do. Of course, it does not have hundreds of blog posts providing content visible to search engines behind it either, so my guess is that over this same span of time next year, there is likely to be some improvement.