For immediate release: March 5th, 2014 – Kudos, which helps authors and institutions maximize the impact and visibility of their publications, has announced new clients including the American Society for Microbiology, Emerald Group Publishing, Health Affairs, IOP Publishing, Maney Publishing, OECD, Royal Society Publishing, Thieme Publishers and Wiley.

Authors use the Kudos service to explain their work in “plain English” (to increase its accessibility), to share these explanations via email and social media (to increase discoverability), and to measure the effects of these activities on abstract views, downloads and Altmetric scores. During the company’s 2013 pilot phase, articles that were explained and shared by their authors using Kudos’ tools saw an average of 19% higher daily downloads than a control group of articles for which Kudos’ tools were not used.

"I have found Kudos really useful,” says Philip Gale, Professor of Supramolecular Chemistry and Head of the School of Chemistry at the University of Southampton. “It not only helps me improve the visibility of my papers, by highlighting them to my social network, but also provides a way of widening the audience for the work by linking a lay summary of the work to the paper."

The Kudos platform is currently undergoing substantial re-development and will be re-launched in April 2014; any researcher will be able to register for free, to use the site for explaining and sharing any article, though usage data will only be available for articles added by participating publishers. For more information, visit www.growkudos.com where you can also sign up for ongoing news updates, or contact us (info@growkudos.com) to arrange a meeting at any of the following events:

• JISC Digifest, 11-12 March 2014, Birmingham, UK
• UKSG 37th Annual Conference and Exhibition, 14-16 April 2014, Harrogate, UK
• Allen Press Emerging Trends in Scholarly Publishing Seminar, 24 April 2014, Washington DC, USA
• STM Innovations Seminar, 29 April 2014, Washington DC, USA
• STM Annual Spring Conference, 29 April to 1 May 2014, Washington DC, USA
• SSP 36th Annual Meeting, 28-30 May 2014, Boston, MA, USA

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Kudos provides a platform:
• for assembling or creating information (such as lay summaries or related multimedia) that helps readers filter the growing quantity of published research;
• for sharing such information (for example, via social media or email) to increase discoverability; and
• for measuring and monitoring the effect of both creating and sharing additional metadata and multimedia.

During its September–December 2013 pilot period, over 5,500 authors registered to use Kudos for explaining and sharing articles. Hundreds of lay summaries, impact statements, short titles and multimedia items were added to aid discoverability and make research easier to interpret. Authors and their publishers, institutions and funders benefit from the thousands of additional article views thus generated.

For more information on Kudos’ publishing partners, see:
• American Society for Microbiology
• Emerald Group Publishing
• Health Affairs
• IOP Publishing
• Maney Publishing
• OECD
• Royal Society Publishing
• Thieme Publishers
• Wiley