David Sommer Director of Kudos and David Sommer Consulting

SSP Pre-conference 28th May 2014 Boston

Unleash Your Authors

Author submission

Author-Publisher Relationship

“Is this my beginning or is this the end? When will I see you again?”

The Three Degrees

Article acceptance…

1996 2006

Challenges in the information sector

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♯1: information overload

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. Scientometrics, 51:1 (2001) 147–162

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!

♯2: dense technical content

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•  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

♯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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♯4: limited publisher resources

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Self-fulfilling popularity

9 9

Usa

ge

or c

itatio

ns

Article Usage / Citation Distribution

Usage / citations

Most read/ cited article

Least read/ cited article

Many articles are NEVER READ and

NEVER CITED

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We have a serious problem…

The problem

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1996 2006

An obvious solution…

Who could help here?

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•  Who really understands the work best?

•  Who is best placed to explain the work to others?

•  Who is already plugged into the relevant audience?

•  Who has links to additional resources that add context to the article?

The Author The Author

The Author The Author

1996 2006

Sure, involve the authors. But will they want to help?

Survey

•  We sent a survey to 42,000 researchers worldwide

•  Around 10% response rate

•  Coverage of all major disciplines

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51%

33%

6%

10%

Could be somewhat improved Could be significantly improved Could not be improved

I don’t know

How do they feel about current levels of visibility, usage and impact?

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n = 3,669

84% of authors think there is room for improvement

To what extent do you think more could be done to increase the visibility, usage or impact of your articles on or after publication?

Do they get much support from their institutions?

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No – there are no staff specifically responsible for this at my institution

I don't know

Yes – press office

Yes – other dedicated staff at a central level

Yes – staff at a central level, but not exclusively dedicated to this

Yes – dedicated staff at a faculty level

Yes – staff at a faculty level, but not exclusively dedicated to this

Does your institution have staff specifically responsible for helping researchers increase and/or demonstrate the impact of their research?

NO YES

n = 3,630

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Me Publisher / society

My co-authors

Institution's PR team

Research support

staff

Library / repository

staff

Funder

1 (least responsibility)

2

3

4

5

6

7 (most responsibility)

Who should have responsibility for increasing levels of visibility, usage and impact?

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n = 3,410

Please rate the following for how much responsibility you think they should have for ensuring your articles are as widely read and cited as possible:

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Me Publisher / society

My co-authors

Institution's PR team

Research support

staff

Library / repository

staff

Funder

1 (least responsibility)

2

3

4

5

6

7 (most responsibility)

Who should have responsibility for increasing levels of visibility, usage and impact?

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They’re pretty willing to do it themselves! 80% said “I’m responsible”

n = 3,410

Please rate the following for how much responsibility you think they should have for ensuring your articles are as widely read and cited as possible:

Who might use tools designed to increase impact?

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0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Me Support staff in my team

Support staff elsewhere in the institution

Don't know

1 (least likely)

2

3

4

5

6

7 (most likely)

75% of respondents quite likely, likely or very likely to use the tools themselves

n = 3,275

If tools were available to help you increase readership and impact of your articles, how likely would you be to use them, and can you estimate the likelihood that others in your institution would use them?

Survey summary

•  84% of authors surveyed thought that more could be done to raise the visibility, impact and usage of their work

•  Over 75% of respondents said they would be quite likely, likely or very likely to use tools themselves to help improve visibility and impact

•  80% of authors felt that it was their personal responsibility to increase the levels of impact, usage and visibility of their work (scoring 5,6 or 7 with 7 being the highest level of responsibility).

Authors appear to be willing to help 21

1996 2006

OK, so authors are willing to help, but will they

be any good at helping improve impact?

Survey

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The short answer is…

YES!

Kudos tool for authors…

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In partnership with …

25 25

Core steps

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1996 2006

explain

Explaining

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An example…

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Royal Society of Chemistry Chemical Science 2014,5, 1118-1127 DOI: 10.1039/C3SC52006D Philip Gale Abstract The transmembrane transport of anions by small synthetic molecules is a growing field in supramolecular chemistry and has focussed mainly on the transmembrane transport of chloride. On the other hand, the transport of the highly hydrophilic sulfate anion across lipid bilayers is much less developed, even though the inability to transport sulfate across cellular membranes has been linked to a variety of genetic diseases. Tris-thioureas possess high sulfate affinities and have been shown to be excellent chloride and bicarbonate transporters. Herein we report the sulfate transport abilities of a series of tris-ureas and tris-thioureas based on a tris(2-aminoethyl)amine or cyclopeptide scaffold. We have developed a new technique based on 33S NMR that can be used to monitor sulfate transport, using 33S-labelled sulfate and paramagnetic agents such as Mn2+ and Fe3+ to discriminate between intra- and extravesicular sulfate. Reasonable sulfate transport abilities were found for the reported tris-ureas and tris-thioureas, providing a starting point for the development of more powerful synthetic sulfate transporters that can be used in the treatment of certain channelopathies or as a model for biological sulfate transporters.

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An example…

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Royal Society Publishing Proc. R. Soc. A DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2009.0618 Maria Nucci Abstract Fels’ conditions (Fels, M. E. 1996 Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 348, 5007–5029. (doi:10.1090/S0002-9947-96-01720-5)) ensure the existence and uniqueness of the Lagrangian in the case of a fourth-order equation. We show that when Fels’ conditions are satisfied, the Lagrangian can be derived from the Jacobi last multiplier, as in the case of a second-order equation. Indeed, we prove that if a Lagrangian exists for an equation of any even order, then it can be derived from the Jacobi last multiplier. Two equations from a Number Theory paper by Hall (Hall, R. R. 2002 J. Number Theory 93, 235–245. (doi:10.1006/jnth.2001.2719)), one of the second and one of the fourth order, will be used to exemplify the method. The known link between Jacobi last multiplier and Lie symmetries is also exploited. Finally, the Lagrangians of two fourth-order equations drawn from Physics are determined with the same method.

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1996 2006

enrich

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35

1996 2006

share

Share

•  Give authors the tools to share their work within their networks

•  Measure the results

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Share

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1996 2006

What are the results…

Early Kudos pilot results…

19% higher article usage per day

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

1996 2006

Summary…

Summary

Authors are your secret weapon…

and they are willing to help promote their articles…

and they appear to be good at it

Article acceptance is the beginning, not the end

Nurture, engage and

UNEASH YOUR AUTHORS!

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David Sommer Stand 57 David@GrowKudos.com www.growkudos.com @GrowKudos

Thank you