Sunday 29 January 2017

Views on Wikipedia related to ALD and VPHA

People of all sorts of backgrounds (including journalists and politicians) use Wikipedia as a quick source to find basic information on a variety of subjects.

The next image shows pageviews analysis for a few pages relevant to ALD and VPHA, taken on January 28, 2017, and showing the statistics for the past twenty days. For example, the page of atomic layer deposition is viewed typically 100 to 200 times per day, while chemical vapor deposition is viewed typically 300 to 700 times per day. There is a pattern related to week days: towards weekend, there are less views. To compare, in ALD History Blog, the typical number of pageviews for an average page is several tens; the most viewed post (travel notes from ALD 2016) has received 297 views all time as of Feb 28, 2017.



I have during VPHA understood how valuable Wikipedia and also Wikimedia Commons are as a sources, and I invite everyone to contribute in continuously improving their information. Non-specialists will appreciate clear and jargon-free language, logical structure of the page, good pictures and relevant references. Review articles should be good as links. All references should be openly available for viewing---regarding scientific articles, this means that they should be not be behind a paywall but be of open access.

Sunday 8 January 2017

VPHA article featured + most read in JVSTA

With pleasure I can share that the review article from VPHA, "Recommended reading list of early publications on atomic layer deposition—Outcome of the “Virtual Project on the History of ALD" (62 authors), JVSTA 35 (2017) 010801, http://dx.doi.org/10.1116/1.4971389, has currently a "featured" status in the website of Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology and it is currently no. 1 in the "most read" list. See below for a screen capture from http://avs.scitation.org/journal/jva taken on January 8, 2016.

The metrics of the article report that it has been viewed 469 times (see screen capture below). For comparison, the second most viewed article---the excellent atomic layer etching overview by Kanarik et al.---has received 375 views.

Regarding the viewing statistics, I have two questions in mind to JVSTA:

  • I cannot find an explanation in the JVSTA website of the time in which the views are recorded. Does the counting start from the original publication of the article or from the beginning of a month/year?
  • It would be interesting to view the Altmetrics summary of the article. Could an Altmetrics link be added to the articles in the website? As an example, the Altmetrics summary of the ALE-ALD essay can be viewed here.  

Monday 2 January 2017

Wikipedia List of multiple discoveries updated with ALD

The Wikipedia page List of multiple discoveries has been updated by adding ALD in the list of multiple discoveries in the 20th century. With this addition, the VPHA Publication Plan Item 11 "Updating wikipedia" is completed.

The update consists of the addition of the following text:


The three references mentioned are the three reviews/essays generated in the Virtual Project on the History of ALD: