TrendMD Endeavors to Develop OA Publishing

One of the strongest currencies in the academy is scholarly impact, which has traditionally been equated with citations, whether for an individual, an article, a department, a university, or a journal. Ever since an exponential increase in scholarly literature has been observed impeding academic progress, many researchers recommended modifying research dissemination and discoverability methods. “Related article Functionality” helps readers find related content and are found to be the most noteworthy and popular feature of scholarly websites. This feature is popular across multiple disciples from Medicine, Social sciences to engineering. TrendMD’s Related Articles feature is AI-enhanced making it more efficient for knowledge translation and dissemination to targeted audiences. It uses the AI-based technique called “Collaborative Filtering” to offer recommendations that are most likely to interest the readers and raises users' overall click-through rate (CTR) on the recommendations feature by nearly three times the CTR of a standard "similar article" algorithm. TrendMD's traffic exchange system and AI-enhanced Collaborative Filtering allow increased readership, citations, and Impact Factor, driving submissions, and further conversations and signups.

Engaging, relevant content is essential to attract readers, build trust, drive impact, and garner citations. Even with excellent content, meeting citation objectives is a challenge – unless you can reach the right audience with that content.

The scholarly impact is largely determined by citations, as we know. It is, however, difficult to increase citation rates in peer-reviewed articles using evidence-based methods. In the period 1990 to 2015, 35% of articles were published but not cited, a growing gap¹. According to a 2021 study², the exponential increase in scholarly literature may impede academic progress and the adoption of new ideas. In order to counteract this effect, the study authors recommend changes in how recent research is disseminated and discovered.

How can content be discovered most efficiently? A 2021 survey by Simon Inger and Tracy Gardner from Renew Consultants, "How Readers Discover Content in Scholarly Publications,"³ collected 15K responses from readers worldwide in every academic discipline. They found that links to related articles are the most noteworthy feature of scholarly websites. It is also the only feature that is not declining in popularity.

"Related Articles functionality is the most useful feature of those tested and has maintained its position fairly consistently throughout the study," the survey found. Furthermore, Related Articles were the most popular feature in all three areas of scholarly research surveyed: Medicine, Social Sciences/Humanities, and Science/Technology/Engineering.

TrendMD offers an AI-enhanced version of this Related Articles feature. It’s an efficient digital tool for knowledge translation and dissemination to targeted audiences. Our network substantially facilitates research uptake.

Unlike the "More like this" suggestions associated with a search function, TrendMD's Recommended Articles widget uses an AI technique called Collaborative Filtering to offer recommendations that are most likely to interest the readers.

Collaborative Filtering considers the article they are reading, what they have read before, and what other readers with similar interests have read. This technology has been shown⁴ to raise users' overall click-through rate (CTR) on the recommendations feature by nearly three times the CTR of a standard "similar article" algorithm.

Solid research underscores TrendMD's substantial impact on citations. In a randomized controlled trial published in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology⁵ articles disseminated by TrendMD saw a 50% increase in citations after 12 months relative to the control. This trial also revealed statistically significant increases in citations (relative to the control) in three out of eight subject areas: Health and Medical Sciences, Physics and Mathematics, Life Sciences, and Earth Sciences.

In December 2021, a follow-up study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research⁶ compared the citation rates after 36 months. Compared to the control group, articles disseminated in the TrendMD network showed a 28% increase in mean citations.

Through TrendMD's traffic exchange system⁷, more than 500 publishers feature TrendMD's recommendation widget on more than 6.2K websites, benefiting from additional page views and readership. With TrendMD, publishers can increase readership, citations, and Impact Factor, drive submissions, and further conversations and signups.

We are proud to have many success stories that highlight TrendMD as a powerful channel for efficiently and effectively reaching a targeted audience of researchers and professionals.

CONCLUSION

TendMD is effectively using AI technology to discover new articles that may be of interest to researchers in scholarly publishing, along with helping publishers and authors promote their content. As a result of TrendMD´s technology and expanding network, publishers can reach their most valuable audiencesin a highly trafficked and native environment.

REFERENCES

1. Van Noorden R., 2017. The science that's never been cited. Nature, 552 (7684): 162-5.
2. Chu J.S. and J.A. Evans, 2021. Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science. Proceed. Nat. Acad. Sci., 118: e2021636118.
3. Gardner T. and S. Inger, 2021. How Readers Discover Content in ScholarlyPublications. Trends in reader behaviour from 2005 to 2021. Renew Consultants.
4. Anonymous, 2016. What now?: TrendMD guides readers to the most relevant further reading. TrendMD Blog.
5. Kudlow P., D.B. Dziadyk, A. Rutledge, A. Shachak and G. Eysenbach, 2019. The citation advantage of promoted articles in a cross‐publisher distribution platform: A 12‐month randomized controlled trial. J. Assoc. Infor. Sci. Technol., 71(10): 1257-74.
6. Kudlow P., T. Brown and G. Eysenbach, 2021. Citation advantage of promoted articles in a cross-publisher distribution platform: 36-Month follow-up to a randomized controlled trial.J. Med. Internet Res., 23 (12): e34051.
7. TrendMD. https://www.trendmd.com/