Charlie Rapple
Co-founder
and Director
Introducing Kudos
Harnessing Researchers’
Expertise and Networks
to increase
Article Usage,
Citations and
Impact
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The problem
that we are solving,
or,
“challenges in the
information sector”
1996
2006
♯1: information overload
In the world today, there are
50 million
published research articles
and that number is doubling every twenty years
but readers’ time is not doubling!
Growth curve for number of articles published per annum
Chart based on 3.26% pa growth in article numbers,the lower limit proposed by Mabe and Amin
in „Growth dynamics of scholarly and scientific journals”.
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Scientometrics, 51:1 (2001) 147–162
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♯2: dense communication
• Research requires expertise to
understand
• Formal communications often dense
• Opportunity for new discoverability
layer
– e.g. impact statements
– e.g. lay summaries
– e.g. video ‘abstracts’
– e.g. visual abstracts
– e.g. data
Such useful materials lost in silos
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♯3: under-utilized networks
• Personal networks are key to
how people share, find and
select relevant articles
• Traditionally: conferences, word
of mouth, email
• Future: social networks (exist, but
underutilized)
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Self-fulfilling popularity
Usage or citations
Usage / citations
Most read/
cited article
Article Usage / Citation Distribution
Least read/
cited article
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Meanwhile …
1996
2006
Rise of article-level metrics
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Emergence of altmetrics
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Changes in research evaluation
Different and
diverse ways to
assess impact
Less focus on
publication metrics
More focus on
individual
performance
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Articlelevel
metrics
Research
evaluation
• Funding
• REF, STAR
• ORCID
• H-index etc
• Altmetrics
• Usage
marketing
Perfect
Storm?
• Open access
• Academic
spring
• Community
• Advocacy
Discovery
Intelligent
reading
• Filtering
• Multimedia
• Public
accessibility
Author
services
Closing the
loop
• Data-driven
services
• Integration not
duplication
• SEO
• Social media
• International
reach
• Metadata
• Marketing to
individuals
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Our challenge
Problem 1: too
much
information,
not enough
time
Problem 2:
valuable
assets lost in
silos
Problem 3:
valuable
networks
underutilized
How to
match the
right people
to the right
articles?
Authors
Institutions
Publishers
Funders
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Our solution
1996
2006
The missing link
• Harness researchers’ expertise to aid understanding
of their work and give it context
• Leverage researchers’
networks to increase exposure
for their work
• Supercharge existing efforts by institutions, funders,
publishers by involving researchers more effectively
• Automated • Scalable • Cross-publisher • Rewarding
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That’s what lies behind …
Helping maximize the impact of published research by:
• Empowering authors to explain and share their work
• Using article-level metrics to motivate and reward them
• Driving traffic back to publisher sites
• Strengthening relationships between authors and publishers
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Three core steps for researchers
step 1
step 2
Write plain English
descriptions to
explain work:
Add links to resources
that put work in
context:
Share trackable links
within existing
networks:
• Short title
• Lay summary
• Impact statement
• Videos
• Images
• Blog entries …
• Email
• Facebook
• Twitter
step 3
Make articles more discoverable (data
distributed by Kudos) and easier to appraise /
interpret (data displayed alongside article)
Increase
discoverability,
monitor effect of
tools
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Progress to date
1996
2006
Literature review
• Role of social media in research comms (speed,
context, discovery)
• Correlation between social media discussion
and citations (generally: further research
required but positive indications)
• Role of short / lay metadata (increases media
coverage > audience > citations )
• Role of multimedia (broaden audiences)
• Aiming to publish results – would welcome
suggestions of suitable journals!
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Survey: interest in Kudos
• Surveyed almost 4,000 researchers
• 84% of authors think more can be done to raise
the visibility, impact and usage of their work
– 50% get no support from their institution
– 80% feel it is their personal responsibility
• Over 75% think they will personally use Kudos
Authors are likely to embrace Kudos
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Pilot site
100,000
articles,
Jan 2011Aug 2013
50 / 50 random
split for each
title / year
Test
Group
New articles,
Oct 2013 >
(70,000 and
counting!
Control
Group
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Claim your article
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View current metrics
Currently: publisher site
usage, Altmetric score
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View current metrics
It’s not uncommon for
initial article metrics to
look like this …
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Explain your article
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Adding multimedia
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Add context
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Share your article
Choose a template
and generate
proposed text with
trackable links
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Watch the traffic roll in!
(Within 24 hours of the tweet)
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Re-view metrics
See referrals from
tracked links, and review usage against
activities undertaken
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Results so far
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Pilot results
In the first 24 hours after 1 email …
1,000 registrations
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Pilot results
After 12 weeks …
5,500 registrations
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Pilot results
19% higher
article usage per day
for articles shared using the Kudos tools
compared to the control group
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Plans
for 2014
2014 objectives for Kudos
1.
Broader dataset: much wider group of publishers, articles and
researchers: 20-30 publishers, 500,000+ articles, subscription and OA.
2.
Broader functionality: sharing data with repositories and third parties;
integrating with author / publisher workflows and tools; enabling
participating publishers to integrate data in their own platforms.
3.
Broader target audience: engaging institutional and funding partners;
understanding potential of local language tools.
4.
Longer test period: measuring the effectiveness of Kudos activities over
a longer time period (to begin entering citation window).
5.
More rigorous results analysis: including effectiveness of different
combinations / sequences of activities
6.
Business model development: developing a sustainable business
model for Kudos.
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Publishing partners 2014
And some
still secret!
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But no limits for researchers!
• New site
launching April
2013
• Anyone can
register, add
their articles,
view altmetrics,
and use the
tools to explain
and share!
– Usage data is
only
available for
participating
publishers
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Still exploring …
• How important is article performance to
researchers? How is this changing?
• How (and with whom) do researchers currently
share information about publications?
• What are researchers’ experiences to date with
social media / academic networking tools?
• How attractive is the idea of being able to
enrich articles with contextual data?
• How would Kudos best fit within research
workflows?
• What else could it do for you?
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Thank you
Charlie Rapple
charlie@growkudos.com
www.growkudos.com/blog
www.facebook.com/GrowKudos
@GrowKudos
Please follow us so
we can let you know
when you can sign
up for Kudos 1.0!