I was interested to check my blog stats and find out which were the three top posts of 2015. By far the most popular was my declaration that I will not work for nothing for wealthy institutions such as universities. That was published on 19 May, almost halfway through the year, and has had many more hits than any other post. Perhaps it will contribute to some universities becoming a little less reluctant to pay independent experts properly. Wouldn’t that be nice?

The second most popular post was published in June, and called for researchers and academic writers to make reading a priority. This was a useful post for me to revisit, as in amongst my autumnal travels I forgot about the commitment I’d made to read at least one book chapter a day, six days a week. I have been reading, but more sporadically and lumpily, so now I’ve remade that commitment.

I was surprised and delighted to find that the third most popular postwas the one from September when I announced my new venture into indie publishing, and launched my first self-published e-book, Starting Your PhD: What You Need To Know. The second in the PhD Knowledge series, Gathering Data For Your PhD: An Introduction, was published in November, and I’ve now written the third, Analysing Data For Your PhD: An Introduction. That is with my editor and due for publication in January. My brand-new publishing company, Know More Publishing, has already had three enquiries from other writers who want to publish with us, and that was something I did not expect at all.

There’s a fourth post, from the very start of the year, on how to write a killer conference abstract. That was the most popular post from last January but only received a tenth of the hits of the top post overall. However, this post probably outstrips all the others, because it was picked up and reposted on the LSE Impact Blog. Of course I can’t be sure, because I don’t have access to their stats, but through the year I have seen this post being retweeted more than any of my others, right up to and including last week. So I suspect this one may be the real big hitter.

Beyond the blog, 2015 has been a terrific year for me. Highlights included the publication of Creative Research Methods for the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide in April; the creative research methods conference at the British Library in May; working in Calgary, Canada, in October; and being made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in the same month. It’s also been a rather tiring year, so this blog and I are going to have a little rest, now, till the New Year.

I’m excited for 2016 as I have lots of plans. I’ll be publishing the next four e-books in the PhD Knowledge series, convening a session on ‘research for social justice: moving ethics forward’ at the Research Methods Festival in July, collaborating on special issues and e-books, teaching, speaking, and doing research. And I’m sure lots of other fun and interesting things will happen that I have no idea about as yet. I love my life!