Wiley-Kudos Partnership Helps Authors Maximize Article Impact

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., today announced a new partnership with Kudos, a start-up service designed to help academics and learned societies measure, monitor and maximize the visibility and impact of their published articles. From April 2014, the Kudos platform will be freely available across a representative trial of articles from the Global Research portfolio.

“The research process today does not end with online publication; rather that is the starting point for authors in explaining and sharing their articles, particularly using social media to ensure that their published work is at the forefront of the debate within their community,” said Philip Carpenter, Vice President & Managing Director, Research Communications, Wiley. “This partnership will see Kudos providing essential guidance, supported by measurable results, for Wiley’s authors and society partners.”

Launched in September 2013, Kudos is a platform designed to measure, monitor, and maximize the usage and impact of published articles, by providing a new way for authors to use social media to engage the digital community with their research.

The platform enables users to create ‘profiles’ for their published articles. By using short titles, lay summaries and impact statements, authors can make their articles more engaging for a digital readership accustomed to strategically browsing the millions of potential papers at their fingertips.

Users can add related multimedia content, such as videos or links to related research, before being provided with guidance, templates and trackable links to help share their article profiles via social media and email.

As part of the partnership, authors of Wiley articles included in the trial, will be able to compare their metrics to those of their peers and will be offered personalized guidance about maximizing the potential of their paper.

A Kudos-led survey of almost 4,000 researchers from a range of subject disciplines revealed that 85% of responders thought that more could be done to raise the visibility, impact and usage of their work. Crucially 80% felt, given sufficient tools and support that they were in the best position to directly increase levels of visibility, impact and usage. Visibility is of increasing importance to authors, as an ever-growing number of online articles encourage readers to view research more strategically.

“A lot of the materials that might support such ‘strategic reading’ exist only in silos, and often aren’t made publicly available,” Kudos Co-Founder Charlie Rapple told Wiley’s Exchanges Blog.“Academics often have excellent relationships with others who might find their work useful, but they don’t necessarily make the most of these networks. We had often talked about these issues and began to see an idea emerging from the intersection between them.”