Here's an interesting article from a decade ago with (perhaps)
surprising figures on the uncitedness
of academic articles by discipline. It seems disheartening to observe
that much published research doesn't seem to be of use to other
researchers - at least not enough to warrant a citation. I wonder how
things have evolved
since.
Pendlebury found that physics
and chemistry had the lowest rates of uncitedness -- 36.7% and 38.8% of
the papers published in those disciplines, respectively, were not cited
at all in the 4 years following publication. [...] The figure for engineering, however, is above that average -- well above
it, in fact. More than 72% of all papers published in engineering had no
citations at all. Pendlebury says he is at a loss to explain this anomaly,
although he suggests that "sociological factors" might influence the way
engineering researchers cite each other's work.
[...] But scientists, social and otherwise, can take heart. Within the arts
and humanities (where admittedly citation is not so firmly entrenched),
uncitedness figures hit the ceiling. Consider, for example, theater (99.9%),
American literature (99.8%), architecture (99.6%), and religion (98.2%).
And, in one curious anomaly, articles in history (95.5%) and philosophy
(92.1%) were relatively uncited, while those in history and philosophy
of science (29.2%) were not.
This has also got me wondering about rates of unlinkedness for weblog
posts. Surely they are huge - though it should be kept in mind that in
the blogosphere the order is "publish, then filter" rather than the other way around.
This is a great setting. You enter the
property through a tunnel of big trees. You can take a stroll along the
river or around the field just beside the cottage, or you can climb up in the treehouse and
watch the eagles fly. A very pleasant place to relax in. And provincial
capital Charlottetown is nearby. Rob and his wife are charming, too.
Wish I'd stayed longer...
What a great title. If after reading this you still want to pick Fortune, you're a braver man than I.
Though each piece of written material
is unique, the universe of possible choices for any given reader is so
vast that uniqueness is not a rare quality. Thus any barrier to a
particular piece of content (even, as the usability people will tell
you, making it one click further away) will deflect at least some
potential readers.
This reminded me a bit of Stephen's Five Choices.
Content is not scarce. Attention is. These days you are lucky if more
than a handful of people want to look at your output. The reality is
that few of us are irreplaceable to a large number of people.
(Think the solution is to publish offline? Here's a semi-related factoid you may want to consider.)
Chris Corrigan turned me on to the Ecotone wiki, which I find pretty interesting. Check out the Photographing Place topics for instance.
The Ecotone wiki is intended as a portal for those who are interested
in learning and writing about place. It came about as a meeting spot
for a number of webloggers who write extensively about place in their
own blogs and were wishing to work more collaboratively, as well as
raise awareness to this genre of weblogs. We hope that this wiki
complements our weblogs well: as Chris Corrigan puts it, blogs increase span and wikis increase depth.
I like that phrase, "wikis increase depth". This is what I've always
felt wikis were most useful for - characterizing issues and concepts
that run deep and have a long shelf-time, that are always current - as
opposed to weblogs, which I see more as a medium to alert us to what is
changing.
Went across the bridge to Prince Edward Island this weekend and spent a night in 
