Evolution of the National Student Scientific Group's website during its launch phase 2024-2025
Keywords:
student group; website; traffic metrics; scientific outreach; digital impactAbstract
Introduction: digital scientific communication is essential in the training of healthcare professionals, even in contexts of limited connectivity. In Cuba, the National Student Scientific Group (GCEN) created the first nationwide website to centralize student scientific output in medicine, although a systematic evaluation of its impact was lacking.
Objective: to analyze the impact of the GCEN website during its first year of operation.
Methods: an observational, descriptive, and longitudinal study was conducted, analyzing 13 months of web metrics (September 2024–September 2025) using AWStats 7.8. Visitors, visits, page views, HTTP requests, and traffic were evaluated, calculating growth rates and trends using exponential regression and the Mann-Kendall test.
Results: 10,719 unique visitors and 16,278 total visits were recorded, with a monthly growth rate of 12.3% (p = 0.003). Three phases were identified: launch, consolidation with a peak in March 2025 (associated with a national event), and organic growth with academic seasonality. The page-to-visit ratio decreased from 6.9 to 2.1, indicating audience diversification.
Conclusions: the site completed its takeoff phase with 264% annual growth, achieving a prominent position among student platforms. However, 71.7% of the traffic came from non-recurring users, revealing a dependence on academic events. Evolution toward an ecosystem of educational micro-content is needed to encourage recurring visits independent of the academic calendar.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Juan Leonardo Pacios-Dorado, Miguel Enrique Barroso-Fontanals, Héctor Daniel Magallón-Mendoza
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