Emerald Group Publishing has become the first scholarly publisher to sign up to an innovative new pilot service from Kudos and Research Media that will help the research community extend the visibility and impact of published articles.
The new pilot service will see Kudos’s publisher partners – such as Emerald – sponsor the creation by Research Media of compelling professional lay summaries and infographics for a select number of online scholarly articles in order to drive engagement and subsequent download and usage levels.
Emerald recently extended its partnership with Kudos – an online platform that helps increase the impact of published articles – to roll out the value-add service for Emerald authors.
Results of Emerald’s initial trial of the Kudos service were very encouraging, with Emerald authors showing the highest level of activity of any participating publisher, while Kudos found that authors that used its sharing tools during the trial saw a 19% increase in their impact. These results serve to highlight the interest of Emerald authors in broadening the reach and impact of their research.
Research Media, meanwhile, is a research communications agency that provides integrated creative services solely for the research sector. It assists researchers and institutions with their impact and outreach strategies, translating highly complex research outputs into simple and effective summaries across a range of media.
Vicky Williams, CEO of Research Media, says: “We’re delighted that a global publisher of Emerald’s stature has been so quick off the mark in getting on board with this leading-edge pilot.
“Kudos helps researchers, their institutions and funders maximize the visibility and impact of their published articles to all audiences, both within the academic community and more broadly. It’s a natural home for Research Media’s lay summaries and infographics, which are similarly aimed at broadening the reach of research, and engaging audiences that span research, policy and practice.”
Tony Roche, Publishing Director at Emerald, said: “Emerald authors that have used Kudos have seen great value in its sharing tools as a means of disseminating their research more widely. This new pilot is an innovative value-add service providing authors with really engaging digital assets that will help increase usage and impact of their work.
“Emerald is pleased to be first to sign up to this initiative, thereby demonstrating once again its commitment to supporting the author community and driving real world research impact.”
Melinda Kenneway, Kudos Executive Director and co-founder, said: “We’re excited to partner with Emerald on this pilot – while many researchers have the resources and language skills to help explain their work and grow readership, many don’t.
“This new service from Kudos will mean that researchers can choose to have additional support to help their publications get found, read and cited. That support can be sponsored – for example, by a publisher or society – or the author can opt to pay for these services directly. This is all part of our vision of making research more discoverable and accessible.”