The volume of published research output continues to grow at a rapid rate often making it difficult for the researcher to keep up with the literature in his or her field. Adding to this is the need to also demonstrate research impact and value. In the world of Scholarly Communication, the Internet has added yet another layer of complexity by increasing the number of ways one can now measure research impact.
Traditionally, research assessment has been predominantly determined by the Journal Impact Factor and article citation count. This method not only takes time before citations start to accumulate, it also provides a very limited picture of the article’s impact. Alternative metrics have surfaced, offering more immediate results. These results can come from social media or online attention metrics (e.g. mentions via Twitter, Facebook and Google+), number of downloads, shares or posts, mass media (coverage of research output from news outlets), and commentaries from scientific blogs.
Early this year, I met with a representative from Kudos and was intrigued with their service. Their “Step by Step tutorial for using Kudos” (4:00 min) presents an overview and summary of benefits.
The idea behind this organization’s product focuses on providing an “author toolkit” which would allow authors to talk about their published works in a way that would potentially increase research impact. Their service is all about increasing the visibility of scholarly publications and thereby influencing impact.
On Kudos, researchers can:
- Post links to their publications
- Share a description/impact statement of their research
- Add links to related works and resources (e.g. blogs, videos, press releases)
- Monitor the impact of their activities
A recent news release from Kudos entitled “Researchers’ use of Kudos correlates to 23% higher downloads on publisher websites” (June 24, 2016) announced preliminary results of a study that supports the use of this tool in driving attention to researchers’ works.
Kudos has been around for several years and is also being used by various publishers, including AAAS, Elsevier, FASEB, Cambridge University Press, Sage, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley. Kudos was developed not only as a resource for researchers, but for institutions and publishers as well, so that each group could participate at some level in promoting and increasing the visibility of their authors’ research.
For those researchers who are thinking about social media platforms, are already using social media tools, or want to share their research via online channels, Kudos might be a service worth exploring. If you move forward to try out this service, don’t hesitate to let us know what you think.
Donna Gibson
Director of Library Services