Abstract
Data and statistics become increasingly important in legal scholarship. Quantitative legal empirical research and quantitative empirical legal research are on the rise. These kinds of research focus on the idea that reality can, at least to a certain extent, be measured in numbers. In that light, statistics might not only strengthen legal argumentation or provide new insights for international human rights research, but they can also provide an indication of accomplishment. While we should be cautious to attribute too much significance to numbers as such, they help us to gain some insights into our readership and its preferences. The NQHR is therefore proud to share some statistics of its own.
In 2017, the four NQHR issues included one published lecture, four columns, and eleven articles. In the period between March and December 2017, 1 the NQHR had a number of 11,922 full-text downloads. Whilst the NQHR is proud of all contributions to the journal, some of the 2017 contributions deserve special mention as they reached a particularly large readership. In particular, the article of Janneke Gerards and Lize Glas on ‘Access to Justice in the European Convention on Human Rights System’, published in April 2017, had been downloaded over 1,600 times by the end of March 2018. At that same date, just four months after its publication, the column of Tarlach McGonagle on ‘“Fake New”: False Fears or Real Concerns’ reached nearly 3,000 downloads. In addition to these statistics, in the context of the NQHR’s readership, and as a human rights journal, we are particularly happy that our new publisher is dedicated to affordable or even free access to academic publications for institutions in developing countries, including as a partner in Research4Life.
Understandably, the NQHR is delighted with these numbers and developments, and aims to maintain these positive results. And, whereas statistics might provide some insight in the performance of the NQHR, our key objective remains to give scholars a platform to publish as well as to read excellent research on international human rights law. Indeed, also in 2018 and the years to come, the NQHR intends to present its readership with new in-depth articles, inspiring columns and thought-provoking lectures.