Internet Archaeol. 7. Wickham-Jones. The Readership Data

The excavation report for Fife Ness was published in Internet Archaeology on 20th August 1998 and it rapidly ascended to the top six Internet Archaeology papers (a temporary position, but an interesting one nevertheless for a mesolithic site). Within a week of going live it had recorded over 3,000 hits (that is accessed pages) from around the world. I would guess that few of my previous publications have reached as wide an audience. Within six weeks well over a hundred registered readers had looked at the paper (Table 1), and the interest has continued so that over one thousand readers have now accessed the paper (Table 1 and Figure 3).

Country of Origin	30th September 1998	20th May 1999
Africa	2	4
Asia	5	14
Australia	12	35
Europe	46	175
North America	85	313
South America	3	9
UK	146	565
Rest of the World	2	9
Blank	124	37
*Total*	425	1161

Table 1: Origin of recorded users for the paper

Table 1 shows a pattern of interest around the world that would be hard to replicate with most conventional paper publications, certainly the journals that I have usually published in. While the reader figures show a steady decline (Figure 3), a general level of interest has been maintained. Figure 4 demonstrates that even after nearly a year, individual readers are making on average around 20 hits to the paper, suggesting that it is still being explored in some detail.

Figure 4: Average hits per reader by month between late August 1998 and mid May 1999

Readers of Internet Archaeology have to register, and this information helps to compile a user profile for the individual papers. The early profile for Fife Ness is recorded in Table 2, together with the profile at the time of writing. Future profiles may change dramatically as people have better equipment and easier (and cheaper) access to the Internet from their homes. The present profile reflects the current dominance of academic institutions as cheap providers of Internet services to the archaeological public.

Type	Sept 30th 1998	May 20th 1999
Academic	96	255
Student	65	301
Public	39	160
Private	76	273
Other	34	114
Blank	115	58
Total	425	1161

Table 2: User profile of the Fife Ness Report

The Internet Archaeology records not only profile their readership in a detailed fashion, they also allow an exploration of how a paper is being used. In all, by the end of September 1998 there had been over 11,000 hits to the different parts of the paper, breaking down as follows ( Table 3).

Part	Quantity of Hits
Open access areas, eg table of contents	2,346
main text and images	4,664
lithic catalogue	433
calmap	3,711
Canmore links	110
Grand Total	11,264

Table 3: Breakdown of access to paper at Sept 30th 1998

By late November 1998, the initial surge of interest had settled down to some 2-5 readers a day, but there are still at the time of writing (May 1999) well over 500 hits a month (Figure 5). With time, no doubt, interest in the paper will fall off, though it will still be there for those who wish to refer to it. It will be interesting to see how the use of an excavation report pans out over the years. Personally, I would hope to see a general level of use by students, and sporadic continued interest from fellow professionals as well as, perhaps, a few hits from members of the 'public'.