Recent visitor activity on bmj.com is summarised in our Weekly Hit Parade and Most popular listings. Findings from the BMJ Online Questionnaire conducted in July 2007 are also available.

More information on visitor activity is provided below.

Note: M is for activity

The characteristic annual pattern is M-shaped: a fast upstroke in January follows the collapse associated with the holiday season. Then follows a slump, coinciding with the Northern Hemisphere's Summer, which is curtailed by the beginning of the new (northern) academic year. Another sharp rise occurs, which continues until the holiday collapse, beginning in mid-December.

Occasional articles attract wide attention beyond our usual readership, usually by being mentioned by other highly visible websites:
A: Clinical review: Guided self management of asthma---how to do it
B: Papers: Magnetic resonance imaging of male and female genitals during coitus and female sexual arousal
C: Editorials: Ice cream headache
D: Clinical review: ABC of clinical electrocardiography
E: News: SARS virus identified, but the disease is still spreading
F: Filler: All stitched up
G: News: Bush plans to screen whole US population for mental illness
H: Editorial: Angiotensin receptor blockers and myocardial infarction

Note:
The first impact factor to reflect the full effect of the free, full text website was that of 2001.
The first impact factor to reflect the full effect of the new access control policy will be that of 2006 (available mid 2007). See definitions (below) for explanation.

Definitions

• Distinct hosts
  An indicator of the number of different machines accessing the website. Our annual questionnaires suggest about 1.4 individual users/distinct host.
• Successful requests
  The number of pages viewed and links clicked on the site. It excludes images.
  For more detail see: Analog’s definitions
• Page impression
  A file, or combination of files, sent to a valid user as a result of that user’s request being received by the server.
• User
  A unique and valid identifier.
  For more details see: ABCe definitions
• Impact factor
  The journal impact factor is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. It is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the current year to articles published in the two previous years by the total number of articles* published in the two previous years. For example:

*The number of articles include only original research and review articles. Editorials, letters, news items, and meeting abstracts are not included in article counts.

This description comes from ISI Web of Knowledge.