Kudos (www.growkudos.com), the award-winning service for maximizing the reach and impact of research publications, has partnered with Thomson Reuters’ ScholarOne manuscript submission and peer review system to facilitate the capture and dissemination of plain language summaries of research articles. Plain language explanations of research help to broaden usage of research by increasing the discoverability of works, and enabling them to be understood by wider audiences.
Through this pilot, ScholarOne and Kudos will enable authors of six participating publishers to add a plain language explanation of their work during the submission and acceptance workflow; integrating Kudos into existing article workflows in this way will make it quicker and easier for authors to begin the process of increasing readership, and encourage more authors to do so. Summaries added via ScholarOne are then automatically passed to Kudos and made available to the author to create a profile page for their publication on the Kudos platform – helping them promote their work and build readership.
Publishers participating in this pilot are:
- Bioscientifica
- The British Editorial Society of Bone & Joint Surgery – publishers of The Bone & Joint Journal
- Canadian Science Publishing
- Emerald Group Publishing
- Future Science Group
- Wiley.
The summaries collected by ScholarOne are passed to Kudos when an article is accepted and then held under embargo until the article is formally published, at which point the author is invited to use Kudos tools to manage wider outreach and ensure people find, read and apply or cite their publications. Summaries are not only displayed on the Kudos site, but also indexed, syndicated or linked to by search engines, abstracting & indexing services and publisher or institutional websites. Video of how this works: https://youtu.be/Smb6yNdHHCo
“At Kudos, we’re committed to helping research have more impact; ensuring that it’s easy for specialists and non-specialists alike to identify articles of interest is an important part of this,” says David Sommer, Product Director and Co-founder at Kudos. “Plain language summaries give readers an instant overview of an article, without having to work their way through dense technical language.”
“We’re excited to partner with Kudos for this pilot,” says Josh Dahl, Head of Publishing & Associations at Thomson Reuters. “Although some publishers ask authors to write lay summaries, there’s no consistent or organized collection and distribution of this information by the industry as a whole. This partnership enables authors of participating publishers to add a plain language explanation of their work during the submission and acceptance workflow, and benefit from the Kudos service for additional outreach.”
“We know that researchers are very busy people,” adds Karen Proff, VP Marketing, Research Publishing, Wiley. “This pilot is a great way to help us assess author interest in making their work more visible to broader audiences, at a point in the publishing process when they are likely most motivated to put in the time to help explain their work.”
