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ResearchGate – Bias and Credibility

PRO-SCIENCE

These sources consist of legitimate science or are evidence-based through the use of credible scientific sourcing.  Legitimate science follows the scientific method, is unbiased, and does not use emotional words.  These sources also respect the consensus of experts in the given scientific field and strive to publish peer-reviewed science. Some sources in this category may have a slight political bias but adhere to scientific principles. See all Pro-Science sources.

• Overall, this is a Pro-Science source; however, caution is needed as some Predatory Research may slip through the cracks.

Detailed Report

Bias Rating: PRO-SCIENCE Factual Reporting: HIGH Country: Germany MBFC’s Country Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE Media Type: Website Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY

ResearchGate is a social networking site for scientists and researchers  to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators.  According to a study by  Nature  and an article in  Times Higher Education , it is the largest academic, social network in terms of active users.

Read our profile on German media and government

Funded by / Ownership

ResearchGate GmbH owns and publishes the website. Advertising and membership fees generate revenue.

Analysis / Bias

In review, ResearchGate is a place to search for scholarly scientific research and articles. It can also be used to filter research for your scientific preferences. While most of the research found on ResearchGate is legitimate science, there has been criticism of some publishers with  “predatory” publication fees  and fake impact ratings.

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• None in the Last 5 years

Overall, this is a Pro-Science source; however, caution is needed as some Predatory Research may slip through the cracks. (D. Van Zandt 5/17/2018) Updated (02/03/2022)

Source:  https://www.researchgate.net/

Last Updated on September 22, 2023 by Media Bias Fact Check

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Answered By: Kathryn Ray Last Updated: Mar 22, 2024     Views: 446

ResearchGate is a business that hosts open access research. It is neither a publisher nor a journal. It is a popular hub on the web for sharing academic publications. There is no editorial review board, nor does ResearchGate require that articles be peer reviewed, although they may be. Since it is an academic social network and there is no process for vetting the articles, evaluate each source carefully. If you choose to use an article found on ResearchGate, cite it using the citation information provided by the authors. No mention of ResearchGate is necessary.

Sources: Guide from the University of Michigan   and the ResearchGate website.

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ResearchGate

ResearchGate.  ResearchGate,  10115 Berlin, Germany;    http://www.researchgate.net ; free. 

Contemporary scholarly scientific research and publishing are characterized by a large number of journals, the fast tempo of publication, and the competitiveness of the funding process. These factors, in conjunction with the pervasive adoption of communication via social media platforms in academia, have given rise to a demand for new venues for scholars and scientists to collaborate on, publicize, share, and quantify the impact of their published works. Because medical librarians are an integral part of the research and scholarly communication process, the popularity of these new platforms calls for a basic familiarity with their features that an informed library professional can provide.

One example of a platform that has emerged in recent years in response to this demand is ResearchGate, a for-profit, social media–like scientific networking and collaboration website. The umbrella term “scholarly collaboration network” has been used to describe platforms like ResearchGate and its competitors.

ResearchGate was founded in Berlin in 2008 by two physicians and a computer scientist. Since its debut, the site has successfully attracted both large numbers of users as well as substantial private investment [ 1 ]. ResearchGate claims to have reached the 15 million member mark in 2017 [ 2 ].

ResearchGate’s primary feature is the individual researcher profile, which is used to promote scholarly production. The site creates profiles with information harvested from literature databases and other sources, while permitting researchers to create profiles by registering on the site. Standard elements of a profile include a dashboard-like overview, citations to published work, contact and career information, research interests, links to citations of potential interest, and selected impact metrics. Profiles can be augmented by including contact information, a photograph, citations to work that has not been discovered by ResearchGate, and full-text article content for sharing with other members. Site members can follow other researchers and their work, identify colleagues and coworkers such as lab personnel, and share details of current projects.

One distinctive feature is a question submission-and-response knowledgebase, allowing members to pose, respond to, and track questions regarding research and other topics of interest. There is also a proprietary quantitative altmetric called RG score. This score is based on work appearing in the researcher profile and other ResearchGate members’ interactions with it. The RG score has attracted criticism aimed at a lack of transparency in how it is calculated and at vulnerabilities leading to the potential of intentional inflation by those seeking to abuse it [ 3 ].

Revenue streams for the website include advertising that appears on its question-and-answer database page, job recruitment listings, and conference announcements. These displays are customized for individual users.

One characteristic ResearchGate shares with social media platforms is vigorous user engagement activity. The site frequently generates emails encouraging members to log in to monitor how many new views their profiles have garnered, how many members are following their research, and other metrics of engagement. While such notification messages can be managed in member account settings, these persistent enticements to spend time on the site mimic aspects of social media and are drawing increasing amounts of criticism. As with other social media platforms, the potential for misuse and malicious exposure of the accumulated user data are also concerns.

The high visibility that ResearchGate has achieved has not come without controversy. During the platform’s rise to prominence, one factor in its popularity was the large volume of full-text portable document format (PDF) articles present in many researcher profiles. These full-text PDFs were easily discoverable in web searches, making ResearchGate a popular source for article sharing.

Relevant to note is that a sizeable percentage of the articles that were available on ResearchGate were versions of PDFs that were protected by copyright law and not permitted to be shared. This fact came to the attention of a number of publishers and resulted in a coordinated effort on their part to address this issue.

In 2017, a group of publishers, including such large firms as ACS Publications and Elsevier, formed an organization called the Coalition for Responsible Sharing to pressure ResearchGate to take measures against distributing copyright-protected material on its platform. The coalition advocated for adherence to the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) Publishers’ “Voluntary Principles for Article Sharing on Scholarly Collaborations Networks,” a document outlining parameters for approved sharing among researchers [ 4 ].

ResearchGate responded to this pressure by removing some copyright-protected content, but at the time of this writing, the issue had not been completely resolved. Several large publishers, including SpringerNature, have recently announced an agreement to explore ways to allow their content to be shared legally on ResearchGate [ 5 ]. ACS and Elsevier are pursuing the matter in a US federal court [ 6 ].

ResearchGate’s success in building a large user base gives it the potential to survive the substantial legal challenges it faces. While the platform’s scale and attractive user interface may appeal to many researchers, issues such as a lack of transparency in the composition of the RG score, concerns regarding use of member data, and an attitude of ambivalence toward the complicated topic of article sharing contribute to a strong case that ResearchGate is not the optimal solution to the pressing need for a space for scholars and scientists to freely collaborate and communicate regarding their work.

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Open Access and Digital Scholarship Blog

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ResearchGate vs. institutional repositories: Which one should I use?

Yusuf Ozkan

18 October 2019

Academic social network sites are currently used by researchers to share their research as well as collaborate with others studying in a similar field. Sites such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu and Mendeley are popular too. However, this does not necessarily make them the right place to share research. In this blog post, we explain why researchers at Imperial College London should use academic social network sites in addition to, not instead of, institutional repositories (such as Spiral ) . You will also find out about important differences between the two.

Why should I use an institutional repository?

Institutional repositories are officially recognised by governments, publishers, and funders for depositing published research – whereas academic social network sites are not. Even if a publisher does permit uploading a paper to ResearchGate, this will not ensure compliance with the UK’s REF 2021, research funders like the Wellcome Trust or future cOALition S ( Plan S ) OA requirements . This is because these policies clearly state that scholarly outputs are to be made available through institutional (or open access) repositories. Therefore, unlike academic social network sites, depositing your paper in one (such as Spiral ) makes you compliant with funders, publishers and future ones too!

Copyright matters

If you upload a paper to one of these platforms, the risk of copyright infringement is a lot higher. That’s because many of these sites have no mechanism to check for publishers’ copyright permissions and policies. A recent study showed that “201 (51.3%) out of 392 non-OA articles [deposited in ResearchGate] infringed the copyright and were non-compliant with publishers.” The majority of infringement, the study highlights, occurred because the wrong version was deposited. There have also been around 7 million take-down notices for unauthorised content on ResearchGate given by various 17 different publishers which indicates how serious the issue is.

Institutional repositories, on the other hand, are managed (usually by a library team such as the Imperial Open Access Team ) and they always check which version they are allowed to upload to a repository as open access. So, if you mistakenly sent the wrong version of an article, one of them will notify you and ask for a different version. They will also ensure the various embargo policies of publishers for you. Therefore, the risk of copyright infringement is very low when using a repository.

We’re hassle-free

Academic social network sites are commercial companies. This fact creates significant drawbacks. For example, some publishers only permit depositing papers in not-for-profit repositories, which means that ResearchGate and its equivalents cannot be used at all to deposit any version of the file. They also make a profit from your research outputs by selling data, advertising jobs or providing a premium service. For this reason, their services may discontinue, shut down or change to preserve profits. In such a case, the papers you have already uploaded to these platforms may no longer be available. Being commercially-run brings another hassle too: A subscription is necessary to upload a paper to these sites or even for reaching the content of a paper. This means they keep your personal data, or worse, may use it in a direct (by email notifications) or indirect (by selling data) way. 

We’re here to stay

As institutional repositories are non-profit platforms, none of the disadvantages mentioned above will occur. Institutional repositories, such as Spiral, serve as a permanent archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating the intellectual output of an institution. Did we say permanent? We are not going anywhere. Therefore, research outputs deposited in institutional repositories will be preserved and freely accessible to the public for a long time, similar to public archives. Additionally, users can immediately access and download the contents of research outputs from the repositories without a subscription or log-in. And in fact if something is closed access, end users can Request a Copy (under the Fair Dealing exception in UK copyright law) – see an example . We never ask or use your personal data.

Love your repository

In short, there are many reasons to use institutional repositories and to be careful about using academic social network sites. We advise that Imperial researchers always deposit their papers first in Spiral which will provide you with a permanent resolvable link (such as http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/73113 ) that you can safely post anywhere including ResearchGate. By depositing your paper in Spiral, you will ensure compliance with funders and publishers. So, you should use ResearchGate in addition to Spiral not instead of it. If you still want to deposit to academic social network sites, you can do it the legal way and check what publishers permit via the website SHERPA RoMEO . Lastly, repositories are trusted permanent archives for an institution’s research – they respect copyright law as well as promote open access to research – please use them!

Please don’t forget to check out our leaflet below which covers the same topic in a more visual way. You can also download it via Spiral ( http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/74076 ).

*This blog post used some arguments of the article authored by Katie Frtney and Justin Gonder (from the University of California). The article is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Find the original article at https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/12/a-social-networking-site-is-not-an-open-access-repository/

* Another article written by Kathleen Fitzpatrick is also worth reading. Find the article at https://kfitz.info/academia-not-edu/

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Copyright compliance and infringement in ResearchGate full-text journal articles

• Published: 16 February 2017
• Volume 112 , pages 241–254, ( 2017 )

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• Hamid R. Jamali   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1232-6473 1  

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ResearchGate is increasingly used by scholars to upload the full-text of their articles and make them freely available for everyone. This study aims to investigate the extent to which ResearchGate members as authors of journal articles comply with publishers’ copyright policies when they self-archive full-text of their articles on ResearchGate. A random sample of 500 English journal articles available as full-text on ResearchGate were investigated. 108 articles (21.6%) were open access (OA) published in OA journals or hybrid journals. Of the remaining 392 articles, 61 (15.6%) were preprint, 24 (6.1%) were post-print and 307 (78.3%) were published (publisher) PDF. The key finding was that 201 (51.3%) out of 392 non-OA articles infringed the copyright and were non-compliant with publishers’ policy. While 88.3% of journals allowed some form of self-archiving (SHERPA/RoMEO green, blue or yellow journals), the majority of non-compliant cases (97.5%) occurred when authors self-archived publishers’ PDF files (final published version). This indicates that authors infringe copyright most of the time not because they are not allowed to self-archive, but because they use the wrong version, which might imply their lack of understanding of copyright policies and/or complexity and diversity of policies.

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Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Mr. M. Sangari for his help in part of the data collection.

The study was partially funded by Kharazmi University (Iran).

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Jamali, H.R. Copyright compliance and infringement in ResearchGate full-text journal articles. Scientometrics 112 , 241–254 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2291-4

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Received : 14 November 2016

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2291-4

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What is ResearchGate? Linking the Global Research Community

What is ResearchGate? Empowering Researchers Worldwide – Exploring the features and benefits of the renowned research collaboration platform.

In today’s interconnected world, collaboration and knowledge sharing are vital drivers of scientific progress. Researchers from diverse fields need a platform that facilitates networking, enables the dissemination of research findings, and encourages fruitful collaborations. Enter ResearchGate , a dynamic online platform that has revolutionized the way researchers connect, share, and discover scientific knowledge. With its vast user base and extensive range of features, ResearchGate has become an essential hub for the global research community. In this article, we will explore the world of ResearchGate, and understand its purpose, functionalities, and the benefits it offers to researchers worldwide.

What Is ResearchGate?

ResearchGate is a popular academic social networking site that has gained popularity among the scientific community. It offers user-friendly interfaces and features that attract scientists worldwide. The platform provides metrics related to articles, such as impact factors and citations, allowing researchers to assess the impact of their work. Additionally, to the question “What is ResearchGate?”, it supports open-access publications, increasing visibility and facilitating easy access to research information. The scientific community has embraced ResearchGate as a means to promote their work and showcase its impact through reliable scientometric measures. To create a profile and access ResearchGate, here is the link: https://www.researchgate.net/

History Of ResearchGate

ResearchGate was established in 2008 by Dr. Ijad Madisch , Dr. Sören Hofmayer , and computer scientist Horst Fickenscher . The founders, who were researchers themselves, encountered the challenges of collaborating with colleagues located in different parts of the world. This personal experience inspired them to create a platform that would facilitate global scientific collaboration and knowledge sharing. Since its inception, ResearchGate has grown significantly and now boasts a membership of over 17 million researchers, scientists, and academics. The platform continues to evolve, providing a valuable space for researchers to connect, collaborate, and access scientific publications.

Purpose Of ResearchGate

The purpose of ResearchGate is to provide a dedicated online platform for scientists, researchers, and academics to connect, collaborate, and share their work. It aims to facilitate global scientific collaboration and knowledge exchange by offering a range of features and tools specifically designed for the research community. The platform allows researchers to create profiles, upload and share their research papers, and engage in discussions with peers. The purpose is to foster collaboration, promote the dissemination of research findings, and accelerate scientific progress by connecting researchers from different disciplines and geographical locations.

Researchgate Features

ResearchGate offers several features to cater to the needs of scientists and researchers. Here’s an explanation of each feature:

Connecting With Other Scientists And Researchers

ResearchGate enables researchers to discover and connect with peers from diverse disciplines, fostering collaboration and networking. Users can search for researchers based on criteria like research interests and institutions, follow their work, exchange messages, and initiate collaborations. The platform also offers personalized recommendations, group participation, and event information, facilitating meaningful interactions, knowledge sharing, and expanding professional networks within the scientific community.

Creating A User Profile

Creating a user profile on ResearchGate is a fundamental aspect that allows researchers to present their academic identity to the scientific community. Through their profiles, researchers can showcase their expertise, research interests, and achievements. They can provide detailed information about their educational background, affiliations, publications, and research projects. User profiles also enable researchers to connect with peers, follow their work, and receive updates. It serves as a professional platform for researchers to establish their presence, highlight their contributions, and foster collaborations within the global research community.

Network For Scientists

ResearchGate engages scientists by providing a platform that fosters active participation, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. Through features such as discussions, Q&A forums, and personalized news feeds, researchers can engage in intellectual conversations, seek advice, and stay updated on the latest developments in their fields. The ability to follow and connect with other researchers enables scientists to expand their professional networks and establish connections with like-minded individuals. ResearchGate also offers opportunities for collaboration through its recommendation system, which suggests potential collaborators based on research interests.

Job Boards are a feature that serves as a valuable resource for researchers seeking employment opportunities within the academic and research sectors. By aggregating job postings from diverse sources such as universities, research institutions, and industry organizations, it provides a centralized platform for researchers to discover relevant positions. Researchers can browse through job listings, explore postdoctoral positions, faculty positions, research positions, and other research-related roles. The feature enables researchers to connect with potential employers, apply for positions directly through the platform, and expand their career prospects within the scientific community.

Related article: Academic Career – Make a Living Out of Learning

Access To Academic Journals And Publications

Access to academic journals and publications can be obtained through traditional subscription models or open-access initiatives. ResearchGate provides access to a vast collection of academic journals and publications and allows researchers to share and access papers, although availability depends on authors’ choices and copyright restrictions. Researchers should critically evaluate papers and consider alternative means of access, such as institutional subscriptions or open-access resources, to ensure reliable and comprehensive access to academic literature.

Also read: Pros and Cons of Open Access Publishing: Empowering Academics

Default Settings For Article Uploading And Sharing

ResearchGate provides default settings for article uploading and sharing, ensuring that researchers can easily upload their work and control its accessibility. Researchers can choose to make their articles publicly available or restrict access to specific individuals or groups. These settings allow researchers to share their work while maintaining control over its distribution and visibility.

Benefits Of Using ResearchGate

ResearchGate offers several benefits to researchers, facilitating their professional growth and fostering collaboration within the scientific community.

Professional Networking Opportunities

ResearchGate provides a platform for researchers to connect with colleagues from around the world. It enables researchers to build their professional network, establish collaborations, and engage in scientific discussions. By connecting with peers in their field, researchers can expand their knowledge, seek guidance, and stay updated on the latest developments and research trends.

Increasing Visibility Of Work And Publications

ResearchGate plays a crucial role in increasing the visibility of researchers’ work and publications. By uploading their research articles and publications to ResearchGate, researchers can increase the visibility and reach of their work. The platform allows other researchers to easily discover and access their publications, potentially leading to higher citation rates and broader recognition within the scientific community. This increased visibility can be particularly valuable for researchers who may not have access to traditional publishing avenues or want to share their findings quickly and widely.

Enhancing Collaboration Opportunities With Other Researchers

ResearchGate facilitates collaboration by connecting researchers with shared research interests. The platform enables researchers to identify potential collaborators, exchange ideas, and work together on joint projects. Collaborative projects also offer opportunities for sharing data, methodologies, and insights, which can lead to discoveries and breakthroughs. Building strong networks and actively seeking collaboration opportunities can enhance the quality and impact of research, ultimately driving progress in various fields of study.

Challenges Associated With Researchgate

While ResearchGate offers numerous benefits to researchers, there are also some challenges associated with the platform that researchers should be aware of:

Quality Control and Peer Review: ResearchGate allows researchers to share preprints or early versions of their papers that have not undergone formal peer review. While preprints enable rapid dissemination of research findings, they may lack the rigorous evaluation and scrutiny provided by traditional peer review processes. Researchers need to exercise caution when accessing and citing preprints, as the information they contain might be preliminary and subject to revision or correction.

Related article: The History of Peer Review: Enhance The Quality Of Publishing

Misinterpretation and Misinformation: With the openness of ResearchGate, there is a risk of misinterpretation or misuse of research findings. Some users may not have the necessary expertise or understanding to accurately interpret complex scientific findings, leading to potential misconceptions or the spread of misinformation. Researchers should critically evaluate the credibility and validity of the papers they access on ResearchGate and rely on established peer-reviewed sources for reliable information.

Limited Access to Subscription-Based Content: While ResearchGate allows researchers to share their work, it may not provide access to all academic papers and publications due to copyright restrictions and publisher policies. Researchers may encounter limitations in accessing subscription-based content, particularly articles that require paid subscriptions or institutional access. This can create challenges for researchers who rely on ResearchGate as their primary source for accessing scholarly literature.

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Understanding Academia.edu and ResearchGate

← go back to the impact challenge table of contents.

We’ll be honest – we thought long and hard about including this chapter and its activities in the OU Impact Challenge. Academia.edu and ResearchGate both seem attractive to scholars, but they also have their share of disadvantages and downsides.    Ultimately, we decided to include this information, because so many of you at OU have accounts on these two sites. A quick search turns up 3,849 OU-affiliated users on Academia.edu and 4,731 on ResearchGate! But instead of diving right into the “how tos,” we think it’s especially important to place these two sites into context and preface them with important considerations.

Consideration #1: You Are Not the Customer

Consideration #2: You Might Be Breaking the Law

Another consideration with these particular services is the legality of uploading your work there. Most publishers require authors to sign a publication agreement/copyright transfer prior to a manuscript being published which outlines what you can/cannot do with your own work in the future (we will cover this in Chapter 11 of the OU Impact Challenge). Uploading your work – especially a publisher’s pdf – to a site such as Academia.edu or ResearchGate may be a violation of the terms of the publishing agreement, whereas uploading it to an institutional repository may not be (or can be negotiated not to be). Several years ago, a major academic publisher actively went after Academia.edu, requiring them to take down all of the publisher’s content that had been illegally uploaded, much to the surprise and dismay of these authors. And Academia.edu is not the only target . Earlier this year ResearchGate was set to take down nearly 7 million articles or about 40% of their content.

Consideration #3: Understand the Privacy Implications

Finally, some of these sites’ tactics are troubling from the standpoint of privacy and intellectual freedom. Personally and professionally, many find it distressing that a private company, which doesn’t adhere to the same professional ethics as librarians and other scholars do, collects information about who is reading what. Academia.edu, in particular, then offers to share that information with you if you subscribe to their “premium service.” And while their analytics dashboard doesn’t reveal readers’ names, it may provide enough information for you to know exactly who read your work.    You may decide not to pay for Academia.edu’s premium service, but even so – what you view and download will still be tracked. This may not be troubling to you (the “I’m not doing anything wrong, so I don’t care” argument), but we think it sets a bad precedent. What about tracking researchers who study terrorism? Or whistleblowing? Or even climate change? How might people at these academic social media companies create profiles and make judgments about you based on what you are reading? And what will they do with the information they collect, especially if asked for it by government entities?    We’ve posted some additional reading and resources below. And we will continue to cover some of these topics in the future, since they are highly relevant to sharing scholarly work. If you’re still interested in Academia.edu and/or ResearchGate after reading these articles, we’ve gone ahead and included those activities further down below. We’ve purposefully kept these activities brief, at least for now.     

• A Social Networking Site is Not an Open Access Repository , by Katie Fortney and Justin Gonder
• I Have a Lot of Questions: RG, ELS, SN, STM, and CRS , by Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
• Dear Scholars, Delete Your Account At Academia.Edu , by Sarah Bond
• Academia, Not Edu , by Kathleen Fitzpatrick
• Reading, Privacy, and Scholarly Networks , by Kathleen Fitzpatrick
• Upon Leaving Academia.edu , by G. Geltner
• Should You #DeleteAcademiaEdu , by Paolo Mangiafico
• Should This Be the Last Thing You Read on Academia.edu? , by Gary Hall (downloads as a .pdf)

Make Profiles on Academia.edu and ResearchGate

You know all those things you wish your CV was smart enough to do – embed your papers, automatically give you readership statistics, and so on? Academia.edu and ResearchGate are two academic social networks that allow you to do these things and then some.    They’re also places where your some of your colleagues are spending their time. Actively participating on one or both networks may give you an opportunity to have greater reach with other researchers. And getting your publications and presentations onto these sites legally will make it easier for others to encounter your work. They do this not only through the social network they help you build, but also by improving the search engine optimization (SEO) of your research, making you much more “Googleable.”    Both platforms allow you to do the following:     

• Create a profile that summarizes your research
• Upload your publications, so others can find them
• Find and follow other researchers, so you can receive automatic updates on their new publications
• Find and read others’ publications
• See platform-specific metrics that indicate the readership and reach you have on those sites

Let’s dig into the basics of setting up profiles and uploading your work on these sites.

Getting Started on Academia.edu

Fill Out Your Profile

Now it’s time to add your OU affiliation and interests to your profile. Adding an OU affiliation will add you to a subdomain of Academia.edu which will allow you to more easily find your colleagues. The site will try to guess your affiliation based on your email address or IP address; make any corrections needed and add your department information and title.    Then, add your research interests. These are also important; they’ll help others find you and your work.

Connect With Others

Now let’s connect with your colleagues who are already on Academia.edu. You can either connect your Facebook account or an email account to Academia.edu, which will search your contacts and suggest connections.    You now have an Academia.edu profile! You can continue to spruce it up by adding more publications, as well as adding a photo of yourself, other research interests and publications, and connecting your Academia profile to the other services we’ve covered like ORCiD , GoogleScholar , Twitter , and LinkedIn . See how this might be coming together?!?

Academia.edu Homework

Now that you have a profile, set aside half an hour to explore two uses of Academia.edu:     

• Exploring “research interests” in order to discover other researchers and publications; and
• Getting more of your most important publications online; and

Make a Profile on ResearchGate

Next, we’ll help you with the other major player in the scholarly social network space, ResearchGate. ResearchGate claims 15 million users, and it will help you connect with many researchers who aren’t on Academia.edu. It can also help you understand your readers through platform-specific metrics, and confirm your status as a helpful expert in your field with their “Q&A” feature.    Given ResearchGate’s similarity to Academia.edu, we won’t rehash the basics of setting up a profile and getting your publications online. Go ahead and sign up, set up your account (remember to add detailed affiliation information and a photo), and add a publication or two.    Got your basic profile up and running? Great! Let’s drill down into those three unique features of ResearchGate.

Find other researchers & publications

• Top co-authors

ResearchGate Score & Stats

Limitations

We’ve covered many of the limitations of Academia.edu and ResearchGate in the first section of this chapter. But there is yet another one. It has been pointed out that Academia.edu and ResearchGate are information silos – you put information and effort into the site, but you can’t easily extract and reuse it later. This is absolutely correct. That’s a big downside of these services and a great reason to make sure you’ve claimed your ORCiD in Chapter 1 .    One solution to this drawback (and the ones mentioned above) is to limit the amount of time you spend adding new content to your profiles on these sites, and instead use them as a kind of “landing page” that can simply help others find you and three or four of your most important publications. Even if you don’t have all your publications on either site, their social networking features may still be useful to make connections and increase readership for your most important work.

ResearchGate Homework

Content for the OU Impact Challenge has been derived from “ The 30-Day Impact Challenge ” by Stacy Konkiel © ImpactStory and used here under a CC BY 4.0 International License.