Charlie RappleCo-founder

and DirectorHarnessing Researchers’Expertise and Networks to increase Article Usage, Citations and Impact

Introducing Kudos

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

1996 2006

The problem that we are solving,

or, “challenges in the information sector”

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION 3

♯1: information overload

Growth curve for number of articles published per annumChart 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”. Scientometrics, 51:1 (2001) 147–162

In the world today, there are

50 million published research articlesand that number is doubling every twenty years

but readers’ time is not doubling!

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

♯2: dense communication

4

• 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

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

♯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)

5

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

Self-fulfilling popularity

6

Usa

ge o

r ci

tati

ons

Article Usage / Citation Distribution

Usage / citations

Most read/cited article

Least read/cited article

1996 2006

Meanwhile …

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

Rise of article-level metrics

8

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

Emergence of altmetrics

9

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

Changes in research evaluation

Different and diverse ways to assess impactLess focus on publication metricsMore focus on individual performance

11

Article-level

metrics• Altmetrics

• Usage marketing Author

services• Open access

• Academic spring

• Community• Advocacy

Discovery• SEO

• Social media• International

reach• Metadata

• Marketing to individualsClosing

the loop• Data-driven

services• Integration not

duplication

Intelligent reading

• Filtering• Multimedia

• Public accessibility

Research evaluatio

n• Funding

• REF, STAR• ORCID

• H-index etcPerfectStorm?

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

Our challenge

12

How to match the

right people to the right articles?

Problem 1: too much

information, not enough

time

Problem 2: valuable

assets lost in silos

Problem 3: valuable networks

underutilized

Authors

Publishers Funders

Institutions

1996 2006

Our solution

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

• 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

The missing link

14

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

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

15

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

Three core steps for researchers

Increase discoverability,

monitor effect of tools

Write plain English descriptions to explain work:

• Short title• Lay summary• Impact statement

Add links to resources that put work in context:

• Videos• Images• Blog entries …

Share trackable links within existing networks:

• Email • Facebook• Twitter

step 1 step 2 step 3

Make articles more discoverable (data distributed by Kudos) and easier to appraise / interpret (data displayed

alongside article)

1996 2006

Progress to date

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

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!

18

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

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 19

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

Pilot site

20

Test Grou

p

Control Group

50 / 50 random split

for each title / yearNew

articles, Oct 2013 >

(70,000 and

counting!

100,000 articles, Jan 2011- Aug 2013

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION 21

Claim your article

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

View current metrics

22

Currently: publisher site usage, Altmetric

score

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

View current metrics

23

It’s not uncommon for initial article

metrics to look like this …

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION 24

Explain your article

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION 25

Adding multimedia

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION 26

Add context

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

Share your article

27

Choose a template and generate

proposed text with trackable links

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

Watch the traffic roll in!

28

(Within 24 hours of the tweet)

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

Re-view metrics

29

See referrals from tracked links, and re-view usage against

activities undertaken

Results so far

30

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

Pilot results

31

In the first 24 hours after 1 email …

1,000 registrations

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

Pilot results

32

After 12 weeks …

5,500 registrations

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

Pilot results

19% higherarticle usage per day

for articles shared using the Kudos tools compared to the control group

Plansfor 2014

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

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.

35

CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

Publishing partners 2014

36

And some still secret!

37CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

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

38CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL CIRCULATION

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?

Thank youCharlie Rapple

charlie@growkudos.comwww.growkudos.com/blog

www.facebook.com/GrowKudos@GrowKudosPlease follow us so

we can let you know when you can sign up for Kudos

1.0!