Do you know? Is there any good way to estimate how much we read? In terms of cited publications, or hours of work per lifetime, or anything similar? Including or excluding leisure reading? How would you account for variability? Have you seen similar questions answered before? Has it changed overtime with digitized archives, repositories, personalized news and pervasive social media? Do you care to ballpark the number of pages we read per life (with some justification, preferably). Just curious if anyone has thought about that, and if so, how disparate various estimates might be.
Very very good question. In my entire PhD career I read total more than 1500 Papers that have in my backup HDD. But now days there are lots of applications like "Mendeley" , can easily save the papers and other reading materials. From these thing anyone can easily estimate how much they read.
It is very good question. But, it depends on the reader and his/her interest. If the topic is interesting and informative, then usually people read the whole paper. In case of application based paper, reader generally read less contents. However, it is very difficult to discuss.
According to World Culture Score Index, India is the country where people are reading the most in the World: 10 hours and 42 minutes per week per person.
See:
Infographic: Who Spends the Most Time Reading in the World? (http://publishingperspectives.com/2013/06/infographic-who-spends-the-most-time-reading-in-the-world/)
A few interesting suggestions so far. Partha Pakray suggested that bibliographic managers (like Mendeley, EndNote, RefWorks, etc) could give you a rough estimate. Debi Acharjya is right to remind us that the results may be skewed due to skimming practices. Nebi Caka offered a really good-looking geo mashup which seems to be based on 2004-2005 time-use surveys across several countries (how much did you read in a given time?). The measurements are in time spent reading per week per person. The estimates ranges from ~11 to ~3 hrs/wk across the globe, but the participants' accuracy of the self-reports is in question, so is the selection of the 30 countries. Participants' educational level is not reported (or at least the icono-graphics masks it). To me, even the highest estimates do not seem to reflect the reality of the academic life. Seems too low, would you agree? So, are we back to square one? Perhaps, there are other neat ways to track digital reading habits more accurately? Hmm...
Good points, Róbert. Due to these hidden amount of (just professional) reading, it might make more sense to conduct surveys of perceived amounts of readings (per day or work week), or perhaps, diary-type logs of readings, to be more exact. Two problems still persist: busy academics have little time to participate in those types of studies, and the reports are inherently subjective.
1. Much is said to be read, but only a fraction of it can be recalled. To isolate reading (which implies comprehension) from browsing/skimming, we may want to develop some authentication technique analogous to robot checks. For instance, to allow readers to map quotes to their most likely meaning in the context of the document. Preferably a time-constrained answer. Since the quote was taken out of context, the reader should be quite familiar with its essence to be able to match it with the true meaning intended by the author.
2. Once we get how much grasp of a text, a typical reader has, as a sample for a group of academicians concerned (similar fields and demographics), we may then estimate the number of pages an average academician reads in his/her career. This brings me to an interesting comment made by Umberto Eco about the antilibrary ; and how often guests to my house has similarly quizzed me about the actual number of books I have actually read in my collection.
3.It might be interesting to note how much lawyers read to get to an estimate of how much academics read. As there may be similarities in terms of what is focused on and what are skimmed (e.g. sections of forms that are standard; sections in a paper that are just preliminaries to the "meatier stuff")
https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-antilibrary/
https://www.quora.com/Do-lawyers-read-legal-documents-really-fast-in-real-life-like-they-do-in-TV-series
Lets guesstimate it ;):
On average academic works 45 years x 48 weeks (lets assume 4 is a holiday) x 5 working days x 1 paper a day x 10 pages. It makes 108 000 pages Here is your answer :))
Good luck!
Lets guesstimate it ;):
On average academic works 45 years x 48 weeks (lets assume 4 is a holiday) x 5 working days x 1 paper a day x 10 pages. It makes 108 000 pages Here is your answer :))
Good luck!
OK, that's a baseline. Fair enough. So, we read about a hundred bible-size books for an average reader in a life time. Hmmm... This seems on a low side in terms of hours spend reading. Say, a typical North American teaching/research/service academic load (40%|40%|20%), so 16 hrs research a week (out of 40 hr/week)... Even if only half is spent reading (8 hrs), you certainly can (and often have to) absorb a lot more than 10 pages. And that's not taking into account all the reading to prep a few hours of teaching per week. No marking any theses which often vary between 50 and 250 pages, one at a time, no constant flow of student work. Plus reading what you write yourself, communication, social media, or actual important stuff like scientific output Also as for the service component of the job, just reading about 50-60 files of job applicants, or reviewing other "formalities" (files, policies, etc.) must up it a bit. That's why I'm thinking that the baseline is too low. What do you think?
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