You've published your article; now who's going to read it?

During 2014 the IUCr will start work in partnership with a company called Kudos to help its journal authors maximize the impact of their publications.

IUCr authors will use the Kudos service to improve the visibility and impact of their research work via email and social media. As well as helping authors through these various opportunities, the Kudos service will also measure the effects of these activities on abstract views, downloads and Altmetric scores.

During 2013 Kudos ran a pilot scheme with a number of other publishers where it saw an average of 19% higher daily downloads of articles shared in this way.

'I have found Kudos really useful', says IUCr journal author Philip Gale, Professor of Supramolecular Chemistry and Head of the School of Chemistry at the University of Southampton, UK. 'It not only helps me improve the visibility of my papers, by highlighting them to my social network, but also provides a way of widening the audience for the work by linking a lay summary of the work to the paper.'

After publication of an article within an IUCr journal, authors will receive a personalized email from the IUCr in-house editorial team, sent by Kudos, requesting them to log on to the Kudos platform. On the platform, authors will be led through various steps that prompt them to explain their article, add context via links to other content such as images and data, and share their article via social networks and email.

The Kudos platform will enable authors to see the effect of their actions on Altmetrics and from usage data.

To find out more about Kudos and our plans, please contact me at ja@iucr.org.