Surname DNA Journal Update State of Information Dissemination

by Brad LarkinPrepared for the

Family Tree DNA 12th International Conference

on Genetic GenealogyHouston, TexasNov 13, 2016

ISSN: 2334‐3206 CrossRef DOI: 10.14487

Topics

• Finding Answers to Your Questions

• Publishing Your Research Findings

• Genetic Genealogist of the Year Award

Questions and Answers

• Finding Answers to Your Questions– List Servers– Vendor Forums– Crowd Sourcing– Blogs– Social Media

(e.g. Facebook)

Plenty of Questions

• In any field there are questions• Genetic Genealogy is a particularly new

and complex field which drives a lot of questions from participants– Administrative– Technical– DNA Interpretation– Historical contexts– Genealogical contexts

Finding Answers• List Servers / Email Lists• ISOGG Wiki• Vendor Forums

– FTDNA Learning Center• https://www.familytreedna.com/learn/

• Blogs– DNA Explained– Your Genetic Genealogist

• Social Media• Q&A Crowd sourcing

– In Technical and Academic fields, StackExchange provides a forum that rewards Answers and helps you find & get answers.

• Volunteers– Volunteer fatigue

Answers v1 - Rootsweb DNA List

• Original Internet method for distributing information in a community with shared interest were called List Servers (aka Email Lists)

Number of Messages on RootsWeb DNA-L List Server

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500

1,000

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3,000

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-16

Data from http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index/GENEALOGY-DNA?m=r

Answers V2 - Vendor Forums• Forums sponsored by

the DNA testing lab

• New Trend: DNA testing labs partnering with digital genealogical record companies– e.g. FTDNA and

MyHeritage

Answers V3 – Crowd Sourcing

• Stack Exchange provides communities for Crowd Sourcing information– Anyone can ask a question– Anyone can answer the question– The best answers are voted to the top

• http://genealogy.stackexchange.com

Genetic Genealogy Blogs

• Blogs have some of the most thoughtful and experienced genetic genealogist writers– Cyndie’s List of DNA Blogs– Great way to stay abreast of testing products– Learn data analysis techniques– Stay Inspired!

Social Media - Growth of Facebook

• Facebook Groups– Over 1 billion Users accessing

Facebook Groups as of January 2016

– Count of Facebook groups• Early estimates inflated by spammers• Current Estimate by URL index:

56,800 groups of all kinds*

• Groups linked to the term “genetic genealogy”: 36 groups

*Based on Google search for inurl:facebook.com/group

Recruit Participants on Facebook

• Surname & family heritage Facebook Groups.– Recruit DNA

project participants from ‘lost’ branches

– Create a group if one does not exist

Part II – Publishing Your Research Findings

• Print Media Decline• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Project

Researchers• Evolution of Journals• Electronic Dissemination

of Individual Papers• Publishing

Platform Comparison

Image from https://moz.com/blog/backlinks-google-study used by permission

Decline of Print Media

• Average Daily Print Circulation*

– USA Today• 2013: 1,424,000• 2015: 299,000

– 79% decline

– Houston Chronicle• 2013: 231,000 • 2015: 169,000

– 31% decline

* Richard Tofel https://medium.com/@dicktofel/the-sky-is-falling-on-print-newspapers-faster-than-you-think-c84a2f9a9df4#.nis2qjnoe

Decline of Paid Circulation

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USA Today Houston Chronicle

SEO for DNA Project Researchers

• Search result ranking derives largely from:– content matches and quality to search keywords– number of EXTERNAL LINKS TO YOUR PAGE*

• To increase External Links, consolidate your publication to one site URL

– 1 URL with 100 links => 1st ranking– Then PUBLICIZE that one URL

• Publishing ‘wherever you can’ is not necessarily helpful in the search engine age.

– e.g. Spreading your content among multiple web sites can dilute your search engine ranking

» The search engine doesn’t know which publication is truly important

» Search engines tend to discard duplicated content as spam / uninformative

– 100 URLs x 1 link => 100th ranking

* “The correlation between higher rankings and the number of linking websites (root domains) sits at .30” https://moz.com/blog/backlinks-google-study

Publicize Your Work

• Recommendations: – Write up your work as a journal article,

presentation, or whatever format you think is best.

• Be sure to note the date of tests and publication because technology changes all the time.

– Publish to one site (URL)– Publicize that URL in as many places as you

can

Evolution of Journals

• Internet Favors the Author, Not the Journal– 1972 to 2012, the size of the ‘Elite’ journals

increased with more articles in each edition– Yet the ‘top 5% most-cited articles’ are

appearing more often in non-Elite journals*

=> Publishers creating more niche journals=> Author becoming more important than the journal

it is published in• ELECTRONIC DISSIMINATION OF INDIVIDUAL

PAPERS

* Vincent Larivière https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1304/1304.6460.pdf

Internet Decentralization of Most Cited Journal Articles

Data extrapolated from Larivière Figure 2 https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1304/1304.6460.pdf

Concentration of Most Cited Articles in Elite Journals

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1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

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Frustration with Pay Walls

• Many journal articles are behind a pay-wall today.– “Dear List, does anyone have access to this article?”*

– e.g. $ 39.95 for one article in Human Genetics

* http://toxicevolution.wordpress.com/2016/10/02/access-denied/

Electronic Dissemination of Individual Papers

• Academia.edu– $ 17 million in venture capital– Is Not Open Access

• Builds complex user profile with information from other sites:“What freaked me out was when It suggested a picture of my

three year old as an avatar for me. Clearly, it was pulling all kinds of data together to build a profile of me.“*

• Medeley– Purchased by Elsevier, captive software-based– Citation plug-in for Microsoft Word– 2 GB Free, then premium upgrades

* http://www.umsu.de/wo/2015/628

Academia.edu

• Loosely structured but highly searchable repository for papers.– No Editor– Often reposted

from true journals

Electronic Dissemination of Individual Papers with Genetic

Genealogy Focus• ISOGG Newsletter

– Last: Feb 2012• Journal of One-Name Studies

– Last: Jun 2014• JOGG

– 1 volume Fall 2016. Previous: Fall 2011• Surname DNA Journal

– Awards and Surname Presentations 2016

Surname DNA Journalwww.surnamedna.com

Journal Comparison Nature Magazine PLoS ONE Surname DNA Journal

Author’s Fee $ 5,000 $ 1,350 FreeReader’s Fee $ 199 per yr Free Free

Peer-Reviewed Genetic Genealogy Journal• Free to Authors and Readers• Responsive Layout for Mobile Viewing• Registered with ISSN & CrossRef DOI

Publishing Platforms ComparisonJOGG Surname DNA

JournalAcademia.edu

Login Required to read

No No Yes

Free to Publish Yes Yes Yes

ISSN Yes Yes No

DOI – Digital Registration

No Yes No

Genealogy Focused

Yes Yes No

Publishing Platforms Comparison 2JOGG Surname DNA

JournalAcademia.edu

Search Engine Optimization SEO

Good Good Good

Responsive – Mobile Design

No Yes Yes

Page View Analytics for Author

No Some Good

True Long Term Digital Repository

No No Probably

Example of Search Engine Results

• Breise DNA Project Page on Surname DNA Journal– Ranked #1 on Google search*

* For search of “Briese DNA Paper” Nov 8, 2016 11:30am U.S.

Benefits of Journal Publication

• Editorial Review makes the end-product better.

• URLs stable and SEO-optimized to help the community find your work now and in the future– Surname DNA Journal also has

DOI registration, another kind of SEO

• Recruit New Participants• ‘Rock Star’ Status

Author’s photo of Slash, 2016

Surname DNA Journal2016 Genetic Genealogist

of the Year Award

• Prize and plaque• And the winner is ...........