What You Read in 2020

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Looking back on 2020 includes seeing how well we have done to capture your interest with our Open Mike blog posts.  Did we hit the mark?

Here we analyze page views on the Open Mike blog. Similar to what we did for 2018, below we show the top ten blog posts from 2020 based on overall page views pulled from Google Analytics. We issued 43 blogs last year on many different subjects. Posts on topics that are directly related to grant funding were the ones that were viewed the most.

Rank Title Page Views
1 COVID-19 Funding and Funding Opportunities 51,295
2 COVID-19 Resources for Applicants and Recipients of NIH Funding 31,076
3 Introducing the Stephen I. Katz Early Stage Investigator Research Grant Program 24,388
4 An Early Look at Applications Submitted During the Pandemic 17,591
5 New NIH Resource to Analyze COVID-19 Literature 17,100
6 Accepting Preliminary Data as Post-Submission Material and Other COVID-19 Flexibilities 13,637
7 What’s Happening with At-Risk Investigators 12,814
8 Temporary, Emergency Situations Due to COVID-19 and Application Scores Received During Peer Review 12,250
9 Institute and Center Award Rates and Funding Disparities 11,366
10 Case Study in Review Integrity: Asking for Favorable Treatment 9,809

Not surprisingly, posts about COVID-19 were heavily read. This attention extended to our coronavirus webpages too. They received record-high web traffic with more than 650,000 views over the year—with most coming early on.  since we do not know how this story is going to end, expect more on COVID-19 to come.

The workforce was also popular. Our focus on early-stage investigators, on at-risk investigators, and on workforce diversity are areas we will focus on in 2021 and beyond. We were pleased to see that one of the peer review case studies made it into the top ten. These case studies are important learning opportunities to cover the rules and integrity of the peer review process.

I would also like to thank everybody who has taken the time to share your ideas, suggestions, and concerns in the comments section. We read each one that comes in, so keep them coming. And if there are topics that you think we should be covering that we haven’t been, please let us know.

 

One comment

  1. Hello,
    I remain interested in data related to disabled researchers and COVID impact.
    Disabled researchers suffer a lower award rate than other researchers in years without COVID. COVID most likely made the award rate even worse. We need to see demographics.
    Because of the lower award rate and possible concerns about “perception” a disabled researcher may decline to disclose.
    Other factors influencing the lower rate may include disrupted careers specifically because of the disability.

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