ResearchGate: Disseminating, Communicating and Measuring Scholarship?
peter.suber's bookmarks 2014-05-25
Summary:
Abstract: ResearchGate is a social network site for academics to create their own profiles, list their
publications and interact with each other. Like Academia.edu, it provides a new way for
scholars to disseminate their publications and hence potentially changes the dynamics of
informal scholarly communication. This article assesses whether ResearchGate usage and
publication data broadly reflect existing academic hierarchies and whether individual
countries are set to benefit or lose out from the site. The results show that rankings based
on ResearchGate statistics correlate moderately well with other rankings of academic
institutions, suggesting that ResearchGate use broadly reflects traditional academic
capital. Moreover, while Brazil, India and some other countries seem to be
disproportionately taking advantage of ResearchGate, academics in China, South Korea
and Russia may be missing opportunities to use ResearchGate to maximise the academic
impact of their publications.