Experiences With Kudos: Speaking to Clinicians

As an author and researcher, there’s a good chance you love talking about your work. As an ASHA Journals author, you can use Kudos both to discuss your findings in plain language and spread the word about your research!

In 2018, articles published in the ASHA Journals had 24% higher readership when authors used Kudos to provide a plain language summary. Kudos is a web-based platform that allows authors to explain the impact and importance of their work in less technical terms—and even provide an alternate title for their piece. Overall, ASHA Journals authors have explained more than 300 publications, and articles using Kudos have been viewed more than 120,000 times.

However, these findings aren’t unique to the ASHA Journals. A 2016 study across journals showed that articles containing a plain language summary in Kudos had 23% more downloads than articles not on the system.

Using social media in the workplace may be nothing new for audiologists and speech-language pathologists, but some authors are using those same tools to directly reach out to these professionals.

LSHSS Editor-in-Chief Holly Storkel is a prolific author who has been using Kudos to increase the visibility of her work. Storkel said she uses Kudos to let clinicians know exactly what they can get out of an article before reading it. “Kudos allows you to speak to a specific audience,” Storkel said. “The abstract is still pretty technical, and it doesn’t always hit on why is it important and why would I, as a clinician, want to read this article.” Storkel said she uses Kudos to show the connection between her research and what a clinician is trying to do every day.

Aside from allowing authors to write a plain language summary, Kudos also allows them to provide links in a “resources” section. Here, authors can link to blog posts, outside websites, or other sources. Storkel said she has used this space to find multiple ways to share information in a way more friendly to nonresearchers.

Finally, Kudos provides tools and metrics that integrate with Altmetric to easily show you who’s blogging, tweeting, and posting on Facebook about your articles, as well as whether the article has been picked up by any news outlets. “Kudos allows me to speak to a particular audience,” Storkel said. “It’s really intuitive; it’s really straightforward.”

Authors submitting to ASHA Journals can get a head start on their Kudos submission when they submit their manuscript via Editorial Manager. When submitting their revised manuscript, they can provide a Twitter handle and a plain language summary. Then, when ASHA publishes the paper, the summary appears on Kudos. These summaries also appear on each article’s individual page on ASHAWire.

You can learn more about Kudos at Growkudos.com, or check the Kudos Blog for tips on explaining your work in plain language. See the list below for links to ASHA Publications on Kudos from Dr. Storkel and others.