Publishing Analytics on Scholastica
One of the keys to your publication's success is knowing what content your readers are drawn to and where they're coming from. With Scholastica's Publishing Analytics, you'll have your finger on the pulse of your readers!
Set up Scholastica Publishing Analytics
Getting started with Publishing Analytics on Scholastica is easy! Publishing Analytics is available to all journals who use Scholastica Open Access Publishing.
If you don't yet use Scholastica to publish your open access journal, you can learn more here.
Navigating Publishing Analytics dashboard
- Glossary of terms
- Chart and stats overview
- Date selection
- Data dropdown
- Data detail table
- Individual analytics show page
Glossary of terms
If you're new to tracking analytics, you may not be familiar with all of the terms involved. This quick glossary will help ensure you're a pro in no time!
Articles
Any articles that you've created on Scholastica.
Countries
With IP geolocation, it is possible to track visitors location to see where your website's visitors originate. Learn more here.
Downloads
The number of times that the main article file has been downloaded by visitors to your journal's website.
Pages
Includes all pages on your journal's website — including individual article pages, the homepage, For Authors, Editorial page, etc.
Pageviews
The number of times that a page has been visited or viewed. On Scholastica these pages can be articles, blog posts, or profile pages like the For Author guidelines page.
Referrers
A referrer is the URL of a previous item which led to the site in question. For example, if one of your authors posted the URL to her article on her personal website, AnnieAuthor.com, then you might see AnnieAuthor.com as a referrer for your website. Learn more here.
Social Media Referrers
The social media referrers area of your Publishing Analytics pages breaks down the social media URLs, specifically, which led to the page of your site in question. For example, if your journal has a Twitter account and shares an article on Twitter, you'll be able to see if traffic to that article has come primarily from Twitter or from other sources. Social media referrers we specifically track are: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
Unique visitors
Unique visitors are people coming to your website for the first time during a browsing session. Unique visitors are only counted once per session. Learn more here.
Chart and stats overview
You can quickly get an overview of your readership activity by referencing the chart and stats on the publishing analytics page.
To see the results for a particular day in the given date range, you can hover over that point in the chart.
The sidebar on the left acts as a quick reference tool for the summary of pageviews, article pageviews, article downloads, and unique visitors within the given time period.
Date selection
Want to narrow in your analytics data to a particular range or day? Not a problem!
Just click the date or range above the chart to open the calendar. You can select a specific range or click one of our preselected ranges like "last 30 days".
Data dropdown
You can review the pageviews, article pageviews, article downloads, or unique visitors within a time range for your journal by selecting the data you'd like to view in the dropdown to the top right of the chart.
Just click the dropdown to open it and select the particular view you'd like to see.
Data detail table
The analytics chart and stats in the sidebar act as an overview of your journal's visits and downloads, but which pages in particular are receiving those visits? You can discover how your readers are interacting with your content in the detailed statistical data table below the chart.
Each tab drills into a particular area for the given time range selected at the top of the page.
The Pageviews, Countries, and Referrers tabs are all searchable and have sortable table columns.
Pageviews
Here you can view a full list of the pages on your website that received visits, including the number of views and unique visitors. From this page, you can click the hyperlinked title of the page to open up the individual analytic details for that page.
You can also use the dropdown next to the search bar to filter your results to show only blog posts, only articles, only journal pages (like Editorial Board), or all pages.
Countries
Search and sort through your readers' countries of origins to see where your traffic is coming from!
Referrers
This tab can be used to discover how visitors are finding your pages — either through direct searches or referring links from other publications and webpages.
To visit a referrer link, you can copy the referrer URL and paste it into your browser.
Individual analytics show pages
Explore the analytics for a particular page by going to My Journals > Publishing > Publishing Analytics then scrolling down to the stats table and clicking 'Pageviews'.
On that tab, you can search to bring up the page you'd like to report on and then click the hyperlinked title to open up the individual analytic show page.
On the individual analytics show page, you can customize the date or date range by clicking the date above the chart.
You can also select the dropdown to the right of the date picker to choose if you'd like to display pageviews, unique visitors, or article downloads in the chart.
How to use analytics
Now that you know where to find your publishing analytics, how should you use your newfound knowledge?
Year-end reports
Does your journal want to keep your editors, reviewers, and authors up-to-date on how the journal did this year?
You can use your publishing analytics to create an annual report with important information like: number of articles published, unique visitors to the journal, and media attention through referrers. You can then send that report to all of your journal affiliates.
Create content based on reader interest
Your publishing analytics can give you insights into what content is of the most interest to your readers which can help drive future content creation. Maybe your experimental 'Letter to the editor' blog post drove a huge amount of new traffic to your site — it might be worth trying that type of post again!
Keep authors involved in their readership
It's beneficial to keep relationships with authors alive so that if you need guest editors, additional reviewers, or submissions for symposia you have a reliable network to call upon.
A great way to stay connected with your authors is to keep them connected with their scholarship and what it's meant for your journal by sending them updates on readership and performance analytics for their article.