Kudos, a start-up that provides tools and services to help researchers maximize the usage and impact of published articles, has today announced the launch of a pilot programme in which it will partner with Taylor & Francis and the Royal Society of Chemistry.
“The growing range of article metrics is driving authors to take a greater interest in how their work performs after publication,” says Melinda Kenneway, a publishing consultant who co-founded Kudos with fellow consultants David Sommer and Charlie Rapple. “But at the moment, authors are limited in what they can do to help improve the discoverability and readership of their work, and this is where Kudos will help.”
The need for Kudos arises from developments in global academic and research policies that will increasingly see evolving interpretations of ‘impact’ used to assess researcher excellence. Publishers already invest editorial, marketing and technological expertise in making research articles discoverable and useful, and now Kudos will further support this by helping leverage the expertise and connections of researchers themselves to further drive visibility and usage. Kudos aims to provide a highly automated, scalable service to help researchers and their institutions measure, monitor and maximize the usage of and citations to their published articles, always linking back to the publishers’ authoritative version. Kudos also aims to broaden access and enable “strategic reading” by assisting authors in articulating the context of their published work, and enriching it with links to related resources.
“We’re excited to be involved at such an early stage of Kudos’ development,” says Meloney Bartlett, Head of Journal Publishing at the Royal Society of Chemistry. “We’re seeking to understand how we can support our authors in building their visibility, and further increase the impact of their work, and the pilot with Kudos will help us do that.”
Ian Bannerman, Managing Director of Taylor & Francis, adds, "This is a compelling and timely initiative which fits well with T&F’s wider support for authors and their institutions. We're looking forward to testing a number of ideas to identify those that are most effective and useful across a range of subject areas."
Kudos’ founders will continue in their current consulting roles at TBI Communications (Melinda Kenneway, Charlie Rapple) and David Sommer Consulting while steering the project’s pilot phase. “Kudos’ launch period is effectively a research experiment,” explains David Sommer. “At this stage, we have a range of ideas that may help researchers and their institutions increase the readership and impact of their published articles. The pilot phase allows us to test and measure the effectiveness of these ideas with real data and authors, to help us shape the ongoing development of the Kudos service.”
Kudos is seeking partners for its beta phase (from late 2013). Publishers or institutions interested in participating should contact us at info@growkudos.com. You can also sign-up for news updates at www.growkudos.com.
For more information, visit www.growkudos.com