The most popular article in a scientific journal
In the early 2000s, scientific journals just started publishing their materials online. Most readers made a paid subscription for the paper version, and buying digital copies was rare. Nevertheless, publishers understood that the future was digital content delivery, so they opened sites and closely followed attendance, molecular biologist Richard Grant recalls in his blog.
One of the first online versions was opened by the “Journal of Molecular Biology” from Elsevier. As expected, at first, site traffic was extremely low. But soon the editorial staff noticed that one of the articles in issue 324, volume 1, for November 15, 2002, is very popular. Attendance of this page was many times more than all the rest. The article was entitled "Molecular analysis, tissue localization and Ca 2+ bonds of the ryanodine receptor Caenorhabditis elegans".
The management of the magazine asked what was so interesting in a scientific article about Caenorhabditis elegans.
Caenorhabditis elegans is a free-living nematode (roundworm) about 1 mm long. This is a well-studied animal with some interesting and important properties. It is widely used as a model organism in research on genetics, neurophysiology, developmental biology, computational biology. However, the uniqueness of the worm could hardly justify such a huge interest of the general public, especially since none of the visitors paid for access to the full version of the article, but was satisfied with reading the abstract - a brief summary.
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In 2002, the recently launched Google search engine was gaining popularity. The investigation showed that most of the visitors came from the search engine and almost all used the same two-word search query.
They were able to solve the riddle when the editors carefully read the contents of the abstract, which contained the following line:
" CeRyR is found in the body wall, pharynx, vulva, anal and sex muscles of adult worms, as well as in fetal muscles, but is not found in non-muscle cells."
It must be borne in mind that the word [and] is ignored by search engines when processing a request, because it is recognized as an operator.
“There is some kind of morality in this story, but I can't figure out which one,” Richard Grant admits with sadness.
One of the first online versions was opened by the “Journal of Molecular Biology” from Elsevier. As expected, at first, site traffic was extremely low. But soon the editorial staff noticed that one of the articles in issue 324, volume 1, for November 15, 2002, is very popular. Attendance of this page was many times more than all the rest. The article was entitled "Molecular analysis, tissue localization and Ca 2+ bonds of the ryanodine receptor Caenorhabditis elegans".
The management of the magazine asked what was so interesting in a scientific article about Caenorhabditis elegans.
Caenorhabditis elegans is a free-living nematode (roundworm) about 1 mm long. This is a well-studied animal with some interesting and important properties. It is widely used as a model organism in research on genetics, neurophysiology, developmental biology, computational biology. However, the uniqueness of the worm could hardly justify such a huge interest of the general public, especially since none of the visitors paid for access to the full version of the article, but was satisfied with reading the abstract - a brief summary.
')
In 2002, the recently launched Google search engine was gaining popularity. The investigation showed that most of the visitors came from the search engine and almost all used the same two-word search query.
They were able to solve the riddle when the editors carefully read the contents of the abstract, which contained the following line:
" CeRyR is found in the body wall, pharynx, vulva, anal and sex muscles of adult worms, as well as in fetal muscles, but is not found in non-muscle cells."
It has been found that it has been found that it is an embryonic muscle.
It must be borne in mind that the word [and] is ignored by search engines when processing a request, because it is recognized as an operator.
“There is some kind of morality in this story, but I can't figure out which one,” Richard Grant admits with sadness.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/190472/
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