Publisher/SCN pilot from Kudos

Kudos has announced a pilot program to help publishers prevent copyright infringement and reclaim lost usage from sharing of research articles on scholarly collaboration networks (SCNs).

The first publishers to participate in this pioneering approach to managing and understanding usage via SCNs include the American Thoracic Society, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, The Institution of Engineering and Technology, and the MIT Press.

'Many publishers embrace the idea of authors doing everything they can to maximise the visibility of their work, including maintaining a profile in sites like ResearchGate and Academia.edu,' says Charlie Rapple, co-founder and sales & marketing director of Kudos.

'The challenge is to ensure sharing is copyright compliant, and to measure usage happening in such platforms so that authors, institutions, funders and others can easily gain a comprehensive understanding of the interest in and readership of an author’s work. Our new solution is an exciting step forward in terms of tackling this major industry challenge.'

The pilot also sees a new partnership between Kudos and innovative technology company ReadCube, whose read-only enhanced PDFs will feature as an option within the Kudos solution. 'We’re delighted to partner with Kudos to help provide a simple solution to a problem that is becoming a growing challenge for readers and publishers alike,' added Robert McGrath, CEO of ReadCube.

The pilot runs through to the end of 2017; participation is limited, with a small number of seats remaining which will be offered on a first come, first served basis. There is no requirement to be a current Kudos customer to participate in the pilot.