Readership Report

[Una Smith]

The table below was extracted from Brian Reid's "Usenet Readership
Report for January 1993", posted in the Usenet newsgroup news.lists. 
It includes all the newsgroups that contain the string "bio", plus
a few of the largest newsgroups for comparison purposes. 

Some thoughts:

No bionet.* newsgroup is carried by more than 50% of all Usenet sites
(a third of those are carried by fewer than 40%), while sci.bio and
sci.bio.technology are carried by 80% and 72% of all sites.

The total number of readers is greatly over-estimated for the biology-
related newsgroups because the readership reports are biased toward
universities, *and* a disproportionate number of biologists who read
Usenet news are at universities.  Although the estimate of the total
readership of each group is probably quite inaccurate, I see no reason
why the relative numbers of readers should also be biased.

The cost ratio of bionet.molbio.genbank.updates is extremely high! 
Perhaps it is time to reconsider this mode of distribution, especially
in light of the availability of anonymous ftp and even ftp-by-e-mail.


        +-- Estimated total number of people who read the group, worldwide.
        |     +-- Actual number of readers in sampled population
        |     |     +-- Propagation: how many sites receive this group at all
        |     |     |      +-- Recent traffic (messages per month)
        |     |     |      |      +-- Recent traffic (kilobytes per month)
        |     |     |      |      |      +-- Cost ratio: $US/month/rdr
        V     V     V      V      V      V      
   1 220000  5781   91%    16   244.2    0.00   news.announce.newusers 
   3 140000  3779   87%     4   199.5    0.00   news.answers 
   4 140000  3766   85%  1183  2413.4    0.03   misc.jobs.offered 

 285  32000   850   80%   211   389.6    0.02   sci.bio 

 483  24000   649   46%    77   171.1    0.01   bionet.jobs 

 793  17000   454   72%    19    27.7    0.00   sci.bio.technology 

 914  15000   390   47%   142   343.7    0.02   bionet.general 
 955  14000   370   45%   274   422.4    0.02   bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts 
 960  14000   367   45%   200   427.7    0.03   bionet.software 
 992  13000   350   44%    57   147.5    0.01   bionet.molbio.genbank 

1021  13000   338   65%    48   144.9    0.01   sci.engr.biomed 

1042  12000   331   45%    19    38.6    0.00   bionet.molbio.evolution 
1073  12000   317   41%    84   130.1    0.01   bionet.neuroscience 
1082  12000   313   42%     7    36.8    0.00   bionet.molbio.embldatabank 
1173  10000   270   44%    27   912.0    0.07   bionet.sci-resources 
1190   9900   265   39%    25    84.8    0.01   bionet.biology.computational 
1202   9800   262   44%    19    48.5    0.00   bionet.molbio.proteins 
1246   9200   245   42%     7    16.6    0.00   bionet.agroforestry 
1257   9100   242   44%    23   239.5    0.02   bionet.journals.contents 
1273   8800   236   42%  3768 14266.8    1.20   bionet.molbio.genbank.updates 
                         ^^^^ ^^^^^^^    ^^^^
1295   8600   229   37%    31    61.8    0.00   bionet.info-theory 
1298   8500   228   42%    24    81.4    0.01   bionet.users.addresses 
1321   8300   221   44%     6    44.5    0.00   bionet.population-bio 
1328   8200   220   44%     6     4.6    0.00   bionet.molbio.ageing 
1345   8100   216   29%    60   134.5    0.01   bionet.women-in-bio 
1353   8000   213   36%    48   366.2    0.03   bionet.announce 
1371   7800   207   38%     6     7.9    0.00   bionet.molbio.gene-linkage 
1393   7500   199   41%     7    10.1    0.00   bionet.molbio.genome-program 
1399   7400   197   39%    36    66.9    0.01   bionet.genome.arabidopsis 
1460   6600   175   43%     9    99.1    0.01   bionet.molbio.bio-matrix 
1461   6600   175   35%    62   122.8    0.01   bionet.plants 
1470   6400   171   34%    21    97.6    0.01   bionet.biology.tropical 
1505   6000   161   38%     2     2.3    0.00   bionet.genome.chrom22 
1544   5700   151   34%    25    38.1    0.00   bionet.xtallography 
1588   5100   137   35%    10    15.8    0.00   bionet.molbio.hiv 
1655   4400   117   33%    26    33.6    0.00   bionet.immunology 


-- 

      Una Smith      Biology Department       smith-una at yale.edu
                     Yale University
                     New Haven, CT  06511