Tuesday, 12 February 2013, was the International Darwin Day. To mark this, a “quick” email campaign was created and launched at 12:30 GMT. The email and social media push (#DarwinDay) promoted free access to five selected Darwin articles, including his obituary, from our Journal of Natural History.
The campaign was a great success, both for downloads and social media interaction. We exceeded our objective of 1,500 full-text downloads with 1,678 downloads within 48 hours of launch. Darwin's obituary shot up to No. 2 in the “Most read” list for the journal and, after a week, three papers were in the top 10 “Most read” list, with the other three making it into the top 20.
Similar campaigns have commemorated other biologists' anniversaries, such as the centenary of Alfred Russel Wallace's death (7 November 2013).
