{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,21]],"date-time":"2026-01-21T21:30:56Z","timestamp":1769031056318,"version":"3.49.0"},"reference-count":18,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"8","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,4]],"date-time":"2021-08-04T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1628035200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Data"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The choice of what to read is both influenced by and indicative of such factors as a person\u2019s beliefs, culture, gender, and socioeconomic status. However, obtaining data including such personal attributes, as well as detailed reading habits and activities of individuals is difficult and would usually require either (i) data from e-readers, such as the Amazon Kindle, or from library checkouts, both of which are hard to obtain, or (ii) distributing questionnaires and conducting interviews, which can be expensive and suffers from recall bias. In this study, we present a dataset of over 40 million reading instances of 1,872,677 unique individuals collected from Goodreads. Goodreads is a book-cataloging social media platform with millions of users, where users share comments on the books they have read, while creating and maintaining social connections. We enrich the dataset with gender and location information. The dataset presented in this study can be used to perform cross-national and cross-gender analyses of reading behavior among book enthusiasts.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/data6080083","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,4]],"date-time":"2021-08-04T03:57:41Z","timestamp":1628049461000},"page":"83","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":6,"title":["A Global Book Reading Dataset"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"6","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0861-9444","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Nazanin","family":"Sabri","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran 1439957131, Iran"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4169-2579","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ingmar","family":"Weber","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Qatar Computing Research Institute, Doha P.O. Box 34110, Qatar"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,4]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Billington, J., Dowrick, C., Hamer, A., Robinson, J., and Williams, C. (2021, July 20). An Investigation into the Therapeutic Benefits of Reading in Relation to Depression and Well-Being. Liverpool: The Reader Organization, Liverpool Health Inequalities Research Centre. Available online: https:\/\/www.academia.edu\/download\/32364850\/An_investigation_into_the_therapeutic_benefits_of_reading_in_relation_to_depression_and_well-being.pdf."},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"Brown, B. (2020, December 19). The Ultimate Guide to Global Reading Habits (Infographic). Available online: https:\/\/geediting.com\/world-reading-habits\/."},{"key":"ref_3","unstructured":"Brown, B. (2020, December 19). World Reading Habits in 2018 (Infographic). Available online: https:\/\/geediting.com\/world-reading-habits-2018\/."},{"key":"ref_4","unstructured":"Perrin, A. (2020, December 20). Book Reading 2016. Available online: https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/internet\/2016\/09\/01\/book-reading-2016\/."},{"key":"ref_5","unstructured":"Perrin, A. (2020, December 20). Who Doesn\u2019t Read Books in America?. Available online: https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/fact-tank\/2019\/09\/26\/who-doesnt-read-books-in-america\/."},{"key":"ref_6","unstructured":"Perrin, A. (2020, December 20). One-in-Five Americans Now Listen to Audiobooks. Available online: https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/fact-tank\/2019\/09\/25\/one-in-five-americans-now-listen-to-audiobooks\/."},{"key":"ref_7","unstructured":"CNBC (2020, December 20). Physical Books Still Outsell e-Books\u2014And Here\u2019s Why. Available online: https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2019\/09\/19\/physical-books-still-outsell-e-books-and-heres-why.html."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Salmer\u00f3n, L., Arf\u00e9, B., Avila, V., Cerd\u00e1n, R., De Sixte, R., Delgado, P., Fajardo, I., Ferrer, A., Garc\u00eda, M., and Gil, L. (2020). READ-COGvid: A Database From Reading and Media Habits During COVID-19 Confinement in Spain and Italy. Front. Psychol., 11.","DOI":"10.3389\/fpsyg.2020.575241"},{"key":"ref_9","unstructured":"Clement, J. (2020, December 19). Goodreads: Number of Registered Members 2011\u20132019. Available online: https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/252986\/number-of-registered-members-on-goodreadscom\/."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"972","DOI":"10.1002\/asi.23733","article-title":"Goodreads: A social network site for book readers","volume":"68","author":"Thelwall","year":"2017","journal-title":"J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"248","DOI":"10.1177\/1077800418801375","article-title":"Faraway, so close: Seeing the intimacy in Goodreads reviews","volume":"25","author":"Driscoll","year":"2019","journal-title":"Qual. Inq."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"612","DOI":"10.1108\/JD-07-2018-0104","article-title":"Investigation of Goodreads\u2019 reviews: Kakutanied, deceived or simply honest?","volume":"75","author":"Hajibayova","year":"2019","journal-title":"J. Doc."},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2004","DOI":"10.1002\/asi.23805","article-title":"Goodreads reviews to assess the wider impacts of books","volume":"68","author":"Kousha","year":"2017","journal-title":"J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol."},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Alghamdi, A., and Ihshaish, H. (2021, July 20). The use and impact of Goodreads rating and reviews, for readers of Arabic Books. Int. J. Bus. Inf. Syst., Available online: https:\/\/uwe-repository.worktribe.com\/OutputFile\/4448322.","DOI":"10.1504\/IJBIS.2021.117004"},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Maity, S.K., Panigrahi, A., and Mukherjee, A. (2018). Analyzing Social Book Reading Behavior on Goodreads and How It Predicts Amazon Best Sellers. Influence and Behavior Analysis in Social Networks and Social Media. ASONAM 2018. Lecture Notes in Social Networks, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-02592-2_11"},{"key":"ref_16","unstructured":"Goodreads (2020, December 19). Goodreads API. Available online: https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/api."},{"key":"ref_17","unstructured":"Jung, S., Salminen, J., and Jansen, B.J. (2021, July 20). Name2GAN (Version 1.1) [Computer Software]. Qatar Computing Research Institute. Available online: https:\/\/quecst.qcri.org\/tool\/Name2GAN."},{"key":"ref_18","unstructured":"Johnson, J. (2020, December 21). Distribution of the Online Audience of Goodreads.com in Great Britain (GB) in 2018, by Age Group and Gender. Available online: https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/490362\/gb-online-audience-of-goodreads-com-by-age-group-and-gender\/."}],"container-title":["Data"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2306-5729\/6\/8\/83\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T06:40:07Z","timestamp":1760164807000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2306-5729\/6\/8\/83"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,4]]},"references-count":18,"journal-issue":{"issue":"8","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,8]]}},"alternative-id":["data6080083"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/data6080083","relation":{},"ISSN":["2306-5729"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2306-5729","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,4]]}}}