Kudos, the platform for showcasing research, announced a major new initiative to support better understanding of research relating to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. It launched the Sustainable Development Knowledge Cooperative in partnership with Impact Science, a brand of Cactus Communications (CACTUS). Together with publisher partners, Kudos and Impact Science plan to showcase and promote plain language summaries of research that can help reduce poverty and inequality; improve health education and economic outcomes; and protect our environments.
This latest Knowledge Cooperative initiative follows the model Kudos and Impact Science have developed over the past few years, which provides publishers with a way to collaborate in tackling the issues of our time. Working together to summarize and publicize research achieves greater visibility and impact, and is particularly effective for targeting audiences beyond academia who are less familiar with publisher platforms and brands. Readers benefit not only from contextualized explanations of research but also from a single entry point, consistently promoted across a range of channels.
Publisher sponsors will identify content to be summarized and promoted via the cooperative, with subject matter drawn from any of the sustainable development topics such as poverty, hunger, sanitation, energy or climate research. Plain language summaries, videos and infographics will be created by the professional research & impact communication team at Impact Science. A long-term media and advertising campaign will drive widespread visibility and readership.
Earlier Knowledge Cooperatives
The first Knowledge Cooperative, the Climate Change Knowledge Cooperative, was announced in September 2021 and launched in November 2021. Designed to coincide with the26th UN Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP 26), the curated collection provides a single point of entry to articles about climate change from multiple publishers. In January 2022, the two companies launched the COVID Knowledge Cooperative, concentrating on articles about the pandemic from 15 different publishers. September 2022 saw the introduction of the Artificial Intelligence Knowledge Cooperative, providing a showcase to help the public, media, industry, policy makers, educators, and others understand the current and future role and capabilities of AI. The next month, October 2022, Kudos and Impact Science launched a new Knowledge Cooperative to publicize and summarize research on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.
Since Kudos and Impact Science launched the Knowledge Cooperative model, over 25 publishers and partners have supported the creation and promotion of hundreds of plain language summaries of research on topics ranging from climate change and COVID to artificial intelligence. Beyond simply collating content, a major feature of the model is publicity campaigns across different channels, from PR to advertising to highly targeted search engine marketing, to ensure content reaches and engages a much broader audience than would otherwise be looking for research content. The existing cooperative Showcases have reached thousands of readers across academia, education, industry, government and healthcare.