Plaudit is a mechanism for academics to share their research recommendations openly with readers.

Stemming from a concept refined at the eLife Innovation Sprint 2018 by a team of publishers, technologists and researchers, Plaudit aims to provide an easy way to recognise the value of scholarly content, regardless of where it is published. The tool has three main benefits for users: those who recommend research objects lend their authority to the endorsement, the authors of the objects benefit from the endorsement, and readers gain insight into the objects’ potential value.

To recommend research using Plaudit, individuals first login with their ORCID iD – a unique code for identifying researchers and highlighting their contributions to the scholarly record. Once logged in, they can provide their endorsement of a piece of research, indicating with just a few clicks whether they consider it to be clear, robust and/or exciting, which is then reflected next to that research.

Plaudit utilises an open infrastructure of connections with Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and ORCID iDs, feeding data into Crossref Event Data. The data is open-licensed, meaning it can be used in novel ways without restriction. Completely independent of any publisher frameworks, Plaudit has the potential to be integrated easily across platforms. “With this project, we hope researchers will be incentivised to use platforms such as preprint servers and other rapid publication and sharing services,” says Tunru, who will play a lead role in the implementation of the tool. “Ultimately, this could help put the focus back on the research rather than on the name of the journal it is published in.”

The code for Plaudit can be accessed on GitLab.

More details about the tool are available here. 

It is a revised news from the following site: https://elifesciences.org/for-the-press/0cf0e963/elife-backs-plaudit-for-open-sharing-of-research-recommendations