The Integration and Implementation Insights (i2Insights) blog and repository was established to share methods, frameworks, processes, concepts, theories and competencies that help researchers better understand and act on complex societal and environmental problems, as well as to strengthen the global network of such researchers.
Every three months the i2Insights team reviews selected statistics about i2Insights to assess progress towards achieving the aims. Here we report those statistics to the end of March 2024. The next update (to the end of June 2024) will be published in July 2024.
Statistics are reported for:
- Global coverage
- number of contributors by country (Figure 1)
- number of views by country (Figure 2)
- Popularity of posts
- distribution of blog post views (Figure 3)
- Change over time
- number of blog posts published (Figures 4a and 4b)
- number of visitors and views per month (Figures 5a and 5b)
- number of views per month adjusted by number of blog posts (Figures 6a and 6b)
- mean of blog post views in the first three months after publication (Figures 7a and 7b)
- monthly median of lifetime blog post views (Figures 8a and 8b)
- number of comments (Figures 9a and 9b)
- summary of views: per month and average per day (Figures 10a and 10b)
Global coverage
i2Insights aims to share tools for tackling complex societal and environmental problems across all countries.
Number of contributors by country
Figure 1 shows the number of people who have contributed blog posts from different countries. To the end of March 2024 there were 662 authors from 55 countries.
Additional information: The year in which the first contribution from a country was received is shown at: https://i2insights.org/about/#milestones.
Technical notes: Each contributor is counted only once, even if they authored and/or co-authored more than one blog post. If a contributor is a first author and a co-author on different blog posts, they are counted only as a first author. If an author is affiliated with more than one country over time, the country of residence at the time of first publishing in i2Insights is counted. If an author is affiliated with more than one country at the time of first publishing, the country in which they are primarily domiciled is counted.
Number of views by country
Since i2Insights started there have been views from 191 of the 193 nations that are members of the United Nations (Figure 2).
Technical note: This map is provided in the statistics collected by WordPress. The darker the colour, the more views.
Popularity of posts
Distribution of blog post views
The number of views that blog posts have received over their lifetime is shown in Figure 3. There is no obvious pattern that explains why some blog posts are viewed more often than others.
Additional information: Some information about the most popular blog posts can generally (but not always) be found in the annual state-of-the-blog reviews. The blog post viewed more than 414,000 times is A guide to ontology, epistemology, and philosophical perspectives for interdisciplinary researchers by Katie Moon and Deborah Blackman.
Technical notes: These numbers are based on views via each blog post’s unique URL. These figures are underestimates of each blog post’s views, as blog posts can also be viewed via the home page, blog scroll or any page showing a list of posts as excerpts. From the beginning of January to the end of March 2024, 7% of views were not via the unique URLs but instead were via the home page, pages showing a list of posts as excerpts, or the blog scroll.
Starting in May 2022, 34 blog posts potentially received additional views when visitors to resources on a sister website (https://i2s.anu.edu.au) were redirected to similar resources on i2Insights. For two blog posts, the additional views are in the hundreds per month. For a few they are in the tens per month and for most the increased views are less than 10 per month.
Change over time
Change over time is examined for number of blog posts published, visitors to i2Insights, blog post views and comments on blog posts.
Number of blog posts published
Figures 4a and 4b show the number of new blog posts published each month (blue bars) and the accumulated number of blog posts published in previous months (‘old’ posts; red line). Figure 4a provides statistics to the end of December 2020 and Figure 4b provides statistics from January 2021 onwards.
Additional information: From April 2017 the number of blog posts published each month was deliberately reduced compared with earlier months. Since then there has been a regular publication schedule of one blog post per week (very occasionally two), with a two-three week break from late December to early January. To avoid a significant backlog of blog posts building up, two blog posts per week were published in February 2021 and again for part of August and September 2021. Publication of the Stakeholder Engagement Primer and the Understanding Diversity Primer also increased the number of blog posts in October – December 2021 and April – June 2022, respectively.
Number of visitors and views per month
Figures 5a and 5b show the number of visitors to i2Insights each month (black line), as well as the number of views of all blog posts in that month. The bar for the number of views is divided into coloured blocks as follows:
- Red block: views of new posts ie., views of posts published sometime during that month
- Dark green block: views of most popular old post outlier – A guide to ontology, epistemology, and philosophical perspectives for interdisciplinary researchers by Katie Moon and Deborah Blackman
- Green block: views of other old posts ie., views of posts published in previous months other than the popular outlier
- Blue block: other views of blog posts eg via the home page or blog scroll, labelled “home page etc”
- Orange Block: other page views; this includes the about page, index and instructions to authors (only shown in Figure 5b).
Figure 5a provides statistics to the end of December 2020 and Figure 5b provides statistics from January 2021 onwards. (NB Figures 5a and 5b use different scales on the vertical axis.)
Although there are fluctuations, there is a trend towards an increase in the number of visitors and views over time, until May 2023, after which there is a decline in views. Further analysis is undertaken on the number of views in Figures 6, 7 and 8.
Technical notes: The number of views of new posts, most popular outlier and old posts are based on views via each blog post’s unique URL. The number of views labelled “home page etc” is based on views of the home page, any page showing a list of posts as excerpts, or (after May 2020) the blog scroll. Views of individual blog posts cannot be distinguished on these pages. See also technical note attached to Figure 3. For parts of May and June 2022, the statistics collected by WordPress did not accurately count the number of visitors. The visitor numbers shown in Figure 5b for those months were calculated by dividing the number of views by the ratio of views to visitors averaged across May 2021 – April 2022, but excluding December and January.
Number of views per month adjusted by number of blog posts
Figures 6a and 6b show the views of new and old posts are divided by the number of relevant blog posts:
- the new posts are divided by the number of new posts published in that month
- the old posts (excluding the most popular outlier) are divided by the accumulated number of posts published in previous months (minus one).
Figure 6a provides statistics to the end of December 2020 and Figure 6b provides statistics from January 2021 onwards. (NB Figures 6a and 6b use different scales on the vertical axis.)
Mean of blog post views in the first three months after publication
Figures 7a and 7b show the average views blog posts accrued over the first three months after publication, plotted against the month of publication.
Figure 7a provides statistics to the end of December 2020 and Figure 7b provides statistics from January 2021 onwards. (NB Figures 7a and 7b use different scales on the vertical axis.)
Although there is a lot of fluctuation from month to month, the annual mean (of blog post views in the first 3 months after publication) increased steadily from 2016 to 2021: 313 (2016), 440 (2017), 475 (2018), 565 (2019), 612 (2020), 642 (2021). The median views are 342 (2016), 381 (2017), 440 (2018), 466 (2019), 542 (2020), 614 (2021), demonstrating the same trend of steadily increasing views. However, the views declined in 2022 to a mean of 572 and a median of 496 and mostly recovered again in 2023 to a mean of 655 and a median of 591.
Technical notes: These numbers are based on views via each blog post’s unique URL, which (as discussed in the technical note for Figure 3) underestimates the total number of views. In addition, the views do not take into account the actual date of publication and are tallied across all blog posts published in a particular month (plus the two subsequent months). The error introduced is likely to be small as most views occur in the week following publication. The number of views in the first three months after publication was not affected for blog posts potentially receiving additional views as a result of redirection of viewers from a sister website (https://i2s.anu.edu.au) to similar resources on i2Insights (see technical notes for Figure 3) because the redirections were delayed until three months after the blog posts were published.
Monthly median of lifetime blog post views
Figures 8a and 8b show the median each month of the views blog posts had accrued over their lifetime to that date. By and large the median of the lifetime views has been increasing steadily and was 874.5 in March 2024.
Figure 8a provides statistics to the end of December 2020 and Figure 8b provides statistics from January 2021 onwards. (NB Figures 8a and 8b use different scales on the vertical axis.)
Technical note: These numbers are based on views via each blog post’s unique URL, which (as discussed in the technical note for Figure 3) underestimates the total number of views. The median (rather than the mean) is used to reduce the influence of the outliers (ie., those blog posts with very large numbers of views) shown on the right-hand side of Figure 3.
Number of comments
Figures 9a and 9b show the number of comments made on blog posts in each month. Most comments are made on new blog posts and there is substantial fluctuation from month to month. From 2016 to 2021, there was a trend towards an increase in comments (with a blip in 2017) , but there was a declining trend in 2022 and 2023, with the following annual means of comments per month: 22 (2016), 48 (2017), 34 (2018), 42 (2019) 47 (2020), 69 (2021), 46 (2022) and 38 (2023).
Figure 9a provides statistics to the end of December 2020 and Figure 9b provides statistics from January 2021 onwards. (NB Figures 7a and 7b use different scales on the vertical axis.)
Technical note: Each individual comment is counted, including responses by blog post authors to comments made and any back-and-forth discussion that may have ensued.
Summary of views: per month and average per day
Figure 10a shows the total views of all blog posts for each month since i2Insights started, illustrating an increased number of views over time (with some fluctuations) until May 2023. (The figures for April 2024 are incomplete.)
Figure 10b shows the average daily views of all blog posts in each month since i2Insights started, illustrating an increased number of views over time (with fluctuations), until May 2023. (The figures for April 2024 are incomplete.)
Additional information: One introductory blog post was published in May 2015, with i2Insights officially starting publication in November 2015.
Technical note: Figures 10a and 10b are provided in the statistics collected by WordPress.
Overall technical note: Apart from the author statistics in Figure 1, the statistics shown on this page are based on analyses of data about views, visitors and comments provided by WordPress and should be seen as indicative only, given the limitations inherent in such data collections.
