Remind me: what is Kudos?
Kudos is a platform for authors to explain their work in plain language and connect it to related resources such as data, slides, multimedia or press coverage. Both of these efforts to explain the work, and set it in context, can help to increase its discoverability by enabling the work to be found by a broader range of search terms. Authors can also then use Kudos as a central system through which to manage their efforts to share their work: whether they use email, social media, academic networks, or even offline mechanisms for sharing, they can use trackable Kudos links to measure the effect of their efforts and compare which of their efforts have been effective. Kudos compiles a range of different publication metrics and is, therefore, uniquely able to map communications efforts to publication performance, helping both the researcher themselves, and their publisher, learn how and where best to communicate.
How do publishers benefit from Kudos?
The researcher toolkit for explaining, sharing and measuring helps to motivate researchers to undertake more promotion of their work, by showing them the results that their efforts can have. A recent study of the data built up by Kudos during its first couple of years showed that works that had been shared via Kudos had, on average, 23% higher downloads than works for which the Kudos tools had not been used.
The publishing environment is increasingly competitive; authors have many choices for where to publish their work, and publishers must work harder than ever to add value even to highly ranked journals. Personal touches, such as thanking authors for their promotional efforts, can help differentiate a publisher’s services – but you need to know that those efforts have taken place. Meanwhile, re-sharing authors’ posts can ensure they reach a wider network than they would achieve by themselves – but again, surfacing and acting on those activities ranges from time-consuming (in an open channel like Twitter) to impossible (in a closed medium like Twitter or email). By centralizing and logging authors’ communications around their work, Kudos makes it much quicker and easier for publishers to interact with, amplify and learn from authors’ own efforts to increase the visibility of their work.
A central dataset about authors’ communications also provides you with valuable intelligence about which channels are most effective for communicating. For example, top-level analysis of Kudos data in the previously mentioned study showed that authors are more likely to share via Facebook, but links shared via LinkedIn are more likely to be clicked. Kudos for Publishers enables you to view this kind of intelligence for your author community, to learn what works both for individuals, and at the aggregate level – this can then help you refine your marketing strategies and tactics to focus on the networks that are working best for your authors; it can also, of course, shape the guidance you give authors, thereby helping them too to save time and achieve more results with less effort.
What is involved?
Kudos for Publishers involves:
Interested in working with Kudos to increase the usage of your publications? Ingenta Connect customers benefit from a substantial discount on the regular Kudos fees. Please contact your Account Manager today if you would like to learn more.