The #MathOnco Community
Late last year I began a weekly newsletter filled with links to preprints and publications as a service to scientific community in the field of mathematical oncology.
It’s high time to explore the insight that I’ve gleaned from the past 55 issues since December 2017.
The field
How big is the field of math oncology? When I first floated the idea to my postdoc supervisor (Sandy Anderson) our main concern was the sustainability of the idea. How many relevant articles are published each week? Not to mention, would anyone find the curated list useful or helpful?
Since then, we’ve learned a lot about the state of the field. We currently (as of March, 2019) have just over 400 subscribers. 18 percent of our subscribers click on at least one link per issue (and most of those download multiple articles). Best of all, our subscribers consist of a global conglomerate of researchers from around the world!
That list of subscribers has steadily grown. We were greatly encouraged by the response of the first tweet, gaining 75 subscribers from a single tweet (…and let’s face it — #MathOnco has always had a strong Twitter presence).
Interestingly, the number of article downloads has remained relatively constant. I suspect that there is a core group of #MathOnco faithful who’ve been with us from day 1. Our subsequent subscribers are more tangentially interested. I remain hopeful that with a little community engagement the math oncology field can grow.
The tale of the preprint
It seems as if every week brings a new story about the perils of preprinting science. But that didn’t phase you from downloading a ton of bioRxiv or arXiv papers! It begs the question — are preprints or publications more ‘popular?’
Here’s a quick histogram of the last 6 issues (24–28) and the click rates for preprints (red) and publications (green). Publications have a higher likelihood of catching the eye of many; this longer tail on the distribution may be because I do like to include relevant reviews. Reviews tend to be more popular and are rarely preprinted.
Response
I also think this gives a bit of insight about a realistic audience for our publications too. Many of us (hopefully) find articles from a myriad of sources: twitter, scholar alerts, random searches, recommendations from colleagues. I like how the newsletter gives some level of perpetuity to this collection (archived here), and gives you two chances to be ‘noticed’ — first in preprint and second in publication.
That said, I’ve only received emails from a handful of researchers asking their research to be included! If you’re reading this, please send me your science — it puts your work in front of the eyes of relevant researchers (and helps reduce my weekly workload too!).
P.S.
It’s a personal vendetta of mine to see more readers in the world. I’m pleasantly surprised to see the response of the ‘book of the month’ and ‘news’ categories. Leaders are readers!
