Publishers join Covid Knowledge Cooperative

Society publishers, university presses and commercial publishers have joined an initiative to help broader audiences find, understand and act on research relating to Covid-19, coronaviruses and other infectious and respiratory diseases.

Launch partners of the Covid Knowledge Cooperative, led by Kudos and Impact Science, include the American Association for Cancer Research, American Chemical Society, De Gruyter, Hindawi, SAGE, University of Toronto Press and Wolters Kluwer. Together they will nominate key content to be explained in plain language, and promoted through a single ‘magazine-style’ website.

Charlie Rapple, chief customer officer at Kudos, said: 'Having launched our first Knowledge Cooperative in late 2021, the scale of uptake – both by publishers and by audiences – has exceeded all our expectations. By combining attractive showcases and easy-read summaries with best-in-class PR and marketing, we’ve been able to build and engage a much broader, global readership for critical research. I’m excited about applying that proven formula to pandemic research.'

Nikesh Gosalia, senior vice president for global academic and publisher relations at Cactus, added: 'Our collaboration with Kudos and these leading publishers will help ensure essential COVID information is made more accessible and equip people to counter misinformation. It’s an important initiative and we’re proud to be at the forefront.'

The initiative builds on the success of the Climate Change Knowledge Cooperative, launched in September 2021. That first program continues to grow, with more than 20 sponsors from the scholarly publishing and communication sector. The content showcase is proving particularly effective at driving awareness, interest and engagement with non-academic audiences such as the media, policy makers and industry. An ongoing PR and marketing campaign is delivering mainstream media coverage and substantial traffic from social media platforms. The COVID Knowledge Cooperative will closely follow this proven model, which also includes a research element to provide sponsors with strategic insights about broader audiences’ information needs, behaviours and expectations.

To find out more about promoting your content or brand through the Covid Knowledge Cooperative, please visit the website or contact Colin Caveney.