Industry initiative "to revolutionise research reporting"

In collaboration with more than 30 industry organisations, Silverchair and Oxford University Press (OUP) have launched Sensus Impact – an initiative to enhance reporting and demonstrate the impact of research supported by funders. By connecting the academic community with a range of insightful metrics in one place, Sensus Impact aims to help address the industry-wide challenge of fragmented measurement and reporting.

At the initiative's core is a new platform that collates and centralises a range of metrics about the impact of research, including citation, usage, and attention data. This combination of high-quality data from sources, such as Altmetric, will provide funders with unique insight into the performance of the research they fund. In turn, this further enables them to measure and evaluate its impact following publication in academic journals.   

Sensus Impact is supported by an engaged Community of Practice, including representatives from publishers, funders, and learned societies. This community will continue to play a key role in shaping the initiative, by actively identifying opportunities for additional data visualizations, data points, and functionalities, ensuring that the platform is built by and for the academic community.

Hannah Heckner Swain, VP of Product at Silverchair said: “I’m incredibly happy to publicly launch Sensus Impact, having been a part of this initiative’s ideation since it was just a twinkle in our eye. This launch reflects the impact of our engaged Community of Practice, Silverchair publisher partners, other technology vendors, and friendships in the funding community. Today’s launch is just the beginning. I look forward to being a part of this product’s maturation into a multi-faceted and multi-publisher product that demonstrates the full value of publishers and funders within the scholarly ecosystem.”

Alison Denby, VP of Journals at OUP, added: “Solving industry-wide challenges requires a collaborative, industry-led approach. By engaging in initiatives like Sensus Impact, both funders and publishers can enhance their ability to showcase and assess the impact of funded research. This increased transparency in academic publishing will help drive ambition for high-impact and influential research, which is fundamentally what we are all here to do."

Sensus Impact is live with 18 funder hubs, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Smithsonian Institute.