In 2016 people in 156 countries across the globe read the The Mathematics Enthusiast. Nearly two-thirds of the journal’s readers were outside of the United States: from Malaysia to Germany, South Africa to Norway, Brazil to Japan, and everywhere in between. This location information, along with information about readers’ institutional affiliation and when articles were most heavily accessed, is now openly accessible on the journal’s home in the University of Montana’s ScholarWorks repository.
The Mathematics Enthusiast and the University of Montana used the Digital Commons Dashboard to create the link to the circulation statistics, knowing how vital it is for editors, authors, and readers to see the impact of their work. The Dashboard contains shareable readership information for all content in ScholarWorks, so all TME needed was to create a Dashboard view that included data just for the journal, and generate a link to that data. So far it’s been a hit: the editor likes being able to gather more information about institutions and countries reading the journal; readers like seeing that people across the world have their same interests; and authors can easily point to very public information about the far reaching effect of work they’ve authored. The statistics could prove even more important with recruiting authors and editors for future articles, providing readers with all the information they need to assess whether the journal is a good fit for their work and interests, and ensuring editors are recruiting the most relevant content for TME’s future.
