Sensus Impact: New Industry Initiative to Revolutionize Research Reporting

NISO Member News

Oxford, England & Charlottesville, Virginia | February 14, 2024:

In collaboration with more than 30 industry organizations, Silverchair and Oxford University Press (OUP) have today launched Sensus Impact— a new initiative to enhance reporting and demonstrate the impact of research supported by funders. By connecting the academic community with a range of insightful metrics in one place, Sensus Impact will help address the industry-wide challenge of fragmented measurement and reporting. 

At the initiative’s core is a new platform that collates and centralizes a range of metrics about the impact of research, including citation, usage, and attention data. This combination of high-quality data from sources such as Altmetric, will provide funders with unique insight into the performance of the research they fund. In turn, this further enables them to measure and evaluate its impact following publication in academic journals.    

Sensus Impact is supported by an engaged Community of Practice, including representatives from publishers, funders, and learned societies. This community will continue to play a key role in shaping the initiative, by actively identifying opportunities for additional data visualizations, data points, and functionalities, ensuring that the platform is built by and for the academic community.  

As Hannah Heckner Swain, VP of Product at Silverchair shares: “I’m incredibly happy to publicly launch Sensus Impact, having been a part of this initiative’s ideation since it was just a twinkle in our eye. This launch reflects the impact of our engaged Community of Practice, Silverchair publisher partners, other technology vendors, and friendships in the funding community. Today’s launch is just the beginning. I look forward to being a part of this product’s maturation into a multi-faceted and multi-publisher product that demonstrates the full value of publishers and funders within the scholarly ecosystem.”  

Speaking about the value of Sensus Impact, Alison Denby, VP of Journals at OUP, comments: “Solving industry-wide challenges requires a collaborative, industry-led approach. By engaging in initiatives like Sensus Impact, both funders and publishers can enhance their ability to showcase and assess the impact of funded research. This increased transparency in academic publishing will help drive ambition for high-impact and influential research, which is fundamentally what we are all here to do.” 

Sensus Impact is live today with 18 funder hubs, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Smithsonian Institute.  

To learn more about Sensus Impact and explore the funder dashboards, visit the website here.  

About These Organizations

About Silverchair 

Silverchair is the leading independent platform partner for scholarly and professional publishers, serving our growing community through flexible technology and unparalleled services. We build and host websites, online products, and digital libraries for our clients’ content, enabling researchers and professionals to maximize their contributions to our world. Our vision is to help publishers thrive, evolve, and fulfill their missions. 

About Oxford University Press 

Oxford University Press (OUP) is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. OUP is the world's largest university press with the widest global presence. 

It currently publishes thousands of new publications a year, has offices in around fifty countries, and employs approximately 6,000 people worldwide. 

It has become familiar to millions through a diverse publishing program that includes scholarly works in all academic disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks, children's books, materials for teaching English as a foreign language, business books, dictionaries and reference books, and academic journals.