Most downloaded papers 2013

Submitted by Johan on 25 February 2014.

Our publisher Wiley just released our 10 most downloaded papers for 2013. As you might expect, most of the papers on the list were also published in 2013, but there are also a few surprises. Who would, for instance, have guessed that the most downloaded paper in 2013 was a paper that was published back in 2004?!

When you see that the paper in question is Flying, fasting, and feeding in birds during migration: a nutritional and physiological ecology perspective by McWilliams et al you might however not be so surprised anymore. This paper has been on the most downloaded list for a few years now and it has been cited an impressive 130 times. It clearly shows that good research does not have a best-before-date. Another example of a paper with an impressive impact is Melanin-based coloration is related to parasite intensity and cellular immune response in an urban free living bird: the feral pigeon Columba livia by Jacquin et al. This paper was only published two years ago, but has already been cited 25 times.

It is obviously too early to say anything about the citations and future impact of papers published in 2013, but I´m pretty sure that, among those papers, we also have some that will live on for a very long time. Many of them have already been cited a few times, even though they were published less than a year ago.

 It is very nice to see the wide array of topics among the papers on the list. We see classical ecological papers like Wing moult and mass change in free-living mallard Anas platyrhynchos by Fox et al and Geographic variation and the evolution of song in Mesoamerican rufous-naped wrens Campylorhynchus rufinucha by Sosa-López et al, together with more technical papers like Analysis of multilocus DNA reveals hybridization in a contact zone between Empidonax flycatchers by Rush et al. All in all, the papers are a good representation of the wide range of papers published in JAB.

Why not have a look at the list, we have made all the papers freely available for a limited time so that everyone can enjoy them.

You can access the full list here

Johan Nilsson, Managing Editor

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