ResearchGate
In the vast digital landscape, where social networks connect us to friends and colleagues, one platform carved out a unique space specifically for the world of science and research. ResearchGate emerged as a digital hub where scientists could not only share their work but also connect, collaborate, and navigate the complex terrain of academic publishing. It's a fascinating case study of how technology attempts to bridge the gaps in scholarly communication, yet not without its share of challenges and controversies. ResearchGate rapidly grew to become the largest academic social network by active users, offering scientists a place to share research and connect with peers. The platform faced significant criticisms over aggressive user acquisition tactics, privacy concerns, copyright infringement, and its opaque 'RG Score' metric. Despite controversies and a competitive landscape, ResearchGate has evolved to become an influential force in scholarly communication, impacting how research is shared and accessed.
AI Summary
In the vast digital landscape, where social networks connect us to friends and colleagues, one platform carved out a unique space specifically for the world of science and research. ResearchGate emerged as a digital hub where scientists could not only share their work but also connect, collaborate, and navigate the complex terrain of academic publishing. It's a fascinating case study of how technology attempts to bridge the gaps in scholarly communication, yet not without its share of challenges and controversies.
- ResearchGate rapidly grew to become the largest academic social network by active users, offering scientists a place to share research and connect with peers.
- The platform faced significant criticisms over aggressive user acquisition tactics, privacy concerns, copyright infringement, and its opaque 'RG Score' metric.
- Despite controversies and a competitive landscape, ResearchGate has evolved to become an influential force in scholarly communication, impacting how research is shared and accessed.
Connecting Minds: The Rise of ResearchGate
Imagine a place where scientists from around the globe could gather, share their latest breakthroughs, and discuss the nuances of their work. That's the vision behind ResearchGate, a German commercial social networking site launched in 2008. It quickly became a vital digital space for researchers to upload papers, pose challenging questions, and forge new collaborations across continents.
Who Can Join and What Can They Do?
While anyone can freely browse and read articles on ResearchGate, becoming a member requires a bit more. Aspiring users generally need an email address from a recognized academic institution or manual confirmation as a published researcher. This gatekeeping aims to maintain the integrity and focus of the scientific community within the platform.
Once a member, the possibilities for sharing are vast. Users can upload a wide array of research output, from published papers and raw data to presentations, patents, and even software code. It's designed to be a comprehensive digital portfolio, showcasing the breadth of a researcher's contributions.
Beyond sharing, ResearchGate functions much like a traditional social network for academics. Members can follow the work of other researchers, engage in discussions, and even utilize private chat rooms to collaborate on shared documents or sensitive topics. A research-focused job board further rounds out its offerings, acting as a career hub for the scientific community.
A 'Mashup' of Familiar Social Tools
The New York Times once aptly described ResearchGate as a 'mashup' of popular social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, tailored for the scientific world. Users can follow specific research interests, which helps the platform suggest relevant connections and disseminate questions to those with expertise. This tailored approach fosters genuine scientific dialogue.
Global Reach and Scientific Focus
By 2020, ResearchGate boasted over 17 million users, with its largest communities residing in Europe and North America. While it attracts participants from diverse fields like engineering and psychology, the platform's user base is predominantly concentrated in medicine and biology. This specialized focus creates a rich ecosystem for specific scientific disciplines.
Early Foundations and Rapid Expansion
ResearchGate's journey began in 2008, founded by virologist Ijad Madisch, who still serves as CEO, alongside physician Sören Hofmayer and computer scientist Horst Fickenscher. Although initially launched in Boston, Massachusetts, the company quickly relocated its headquarters to Berlin, Germany, setting the stage for its global aspirations.
Fueling Growth Through Investment
The platform's innovative concept soon attracted significant investment. A first round of funding in 2010, led by venture capital firm Benchmark, helped accelerate its development. This early support fueled a period of explosive growth, seeing its user count skyrocket from just 25,000 in 2009 to over a million by 2011.
Subsequent funding rounds cemented ResearchGate's position as a promising startup. In 2012, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund joined as an investor, followed by a substantial Series C financing in 2013, which famously included investment from tech visionary Bill Gates. This financial backing allowed the company to expand its team from a dozen employees to hundreds within a few years.
Navigating a Competitive Landscape
ResearchGate isn't alone in the academic networking space; it competes with platforms like Academia.edu, Google Scholar, and Mendeley. While Academia.edu may have more registered users, ResearchGate historically distinguished itself with a higher proportion of active users, largely due to its stricter registration requirements for institutional or published researchers.
However, surveys also show that Google Scholar remains the dominant tool for academic search and publication access. ResearchGate carved its niche by focusing more on interactive networking and content sharing, rather than just indexing and discovery.
The Business of Science
ResearchGate's business model hinges on highly targeted advertising, leveraging detailed user activity analysis. CEO Ijad Madisch once envisioned a future where a researcher could 'click on a microscope mentioned in a paper and buy it,' tapping into the trillion-dollar annual spending within the scientific community. This direct connection between research and commerce forms its core revenue strategy.
The company continued to attract significant investment, including over $50 million in 2015 from firms like Goldman Sachs and the Wellcome Trust, alongside further contributions from Bill Gates. Despite reporting increasing losses in its early years, leadership remained optimistic about the platform's long-term profitability.
Evolving Legal and Publishing Partnerships
In recent years, ResearchGate has actively engaged with the publishing world. Notably, in September 2023, it settled a significant lawsuit with major publishers like Elsevier and the American Chemical Society, indicating a move towards more structured relationships. This was followed by a partnership with Sage Publishing, focusing on the distribution of open-access content.
Controversies and Criticisms
Despite its innovative approach, ResearchGate has not been without its share of controversies, particularly concerning user privacy, content policies, and its proprietary metrics. These issues sparked debate within the scientific community and beyond, challenging the platform's reputation.
The Problem of Unsolicited Invitations
One of the most persistent early criticisms involved its aggressive email invitation system. ResearchGate sent unsolicited emails to co-authors of listed articles, often crafted to appear as if they came directly from the primary author. This practice, which the site claimed to discontinue by late 2016, led to accusations of spamming and frustrated many academics.
Further concerns arose from the automatic generation of profiles for non-users. These profiles, sometimes compiled from scraped web data, could misrepresent researchers and proved difficult for them to remove, leading to feelings of being unwillingly included and misrepresented on the platform.
The Enigmatic RG Score
From 2012 to 2022, ResearchGate prominently featured an 'RG Score,' a proprietary author-level metric. While intended to quantify a researcher's influence, its opaque calculation methodology drew heavy criticism for being 'intransparent and irreproducible.' Many argued it shouldn't be used for academic evaluation, as it was found to correlate more with journal impact factors than actual network centrality.
Due to these widespread criticisms regarding its reliability and mysterious nature, ResearchGate announced in March 2022 that it would remove the RG Score entirely by July of that year, signaling an end to this contentious metric.
Safeguarding Against 'The Dark Side' of Academia
The platform also faced scrutiny for its perceived failure to protect against questionable academic practices, such as fake publishers or predatory open-access fees. Critics argued that ResearchGate needed stronger safeguards to ensure the credibility of content and interactions on its site.
A particularly unsettling controversy involved the platform's initial refusal to remove a convicted sex offender, Benjamin Levin, from its user base. Despite protests from Canadian authorities and a significant number of researchers deleting their accounts in solidarity, ResearchGate's inaction sparked outrage over its user policy and moderation practices.
The Copyright Conundrum
Perhaps the most significant ongoing challenge for ResearchGate has been copyright infringement. A substantial number of uploaded papers were identified as infringing copyright, primarily because authors were sharing the publisher's final version rather than pre-print or open-access editions, violating agreements with journal publishers.
In September 2017, a coalition of major scientific publishers, including Elsevier and Wiley, escalated legal pressure, threatening lawsuits and demanding changes to ResearchGate's content handling. They issued takedown requests for millions of articles and called for pre-release copyright checks on all uploads. ResearchGate responded by removing a 'significant number' of copyrighted works, though not all violations were immediately addressed.
Following these disputes, ResearchGate has moved towards cooperative agreements with some publishers, such as Springer Nature and Cambridge University Press. Under these new frameworks, publishers are notified when their articles are uploaded but do not pre-moderate the content, balancing open sharing with copyright protection.
Impact and Perception in the Scientific Community
Despite its controversies, ResearchGate has undeniably made a significant impact on scholarly communication. Early reception, like a 2009 BusinessWeek article, praised its potential to foster innovation, particularly by connecting scientists in developing countries with their peers in industrialized nations, highlighting its ease of use and role in cross-country collaborations.
Usage Patterns and Preferences
Academic reception generally remains positive, even if usage patterns are varied. A 2014 Nature study found that while a high percentage of scientists were aware of ResearchGate and would respond if contacted through it, less than 10% actively used it for discussions, often preferring platforms like Twitter for real-time engagement. However, half of those surveyed regularly visited the site, coming second only to Google Scholar.
A 2016 survey further cemented ResearchGate's dominance as an academic social network, with 61% of published researchers reporting a profile. Yet, the same study noted that relatively few academics actively posted questions or answers, often utilizing the platform more as an 'online CV' or repository for their work rather than an interactive forum.
Influence on Open Access
ResearchGate's widespread usage has also played a role in the broader open-access movement. Its prevalence was cited as a factor reducing the perceived value of expensive 'toll access' journal subscriptions for many library systems, as researchers could often find content directly on the platform. This highlights ResearchGate's unexpected influence on how academic content is accessed and valued globally.
Article
ResearchGate
ResearchGate is a commercial social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators. According to a 2014 study by Nature and a 2016 article in Times Higher Education, it is the largest academic social network in terms of active users, although other services have more registered users, and a 2015–2016 survey suggests that almost as many academics have Google Scholar profiles.
While reading articles does not require registration, people who wish to become site members need to have an email address at a recognized institution or to be manually confirmed as a published researcher in order to sign up for an account. Articles are free to read by visitors; however additional features (such as job postings or advertisements) are accessible only as a paid subscription. Members of the site each have a user profile and can upload research output including papers, data, chapters, negative results, patents, research proposals, methods, presentations, and software source code. Users may also follow the activities of other users and engage in discussions with them. Users are also able to block interactions with other users.
The site has been criticized for sending unsolicited email invitations to coauthors of the articles listed on the site that were written to appear as if the email messages were sent by the other coauthors of the articles (a practice the site said it had discontinued as of November 2016) and for automatically generating apparent profiles for non-users who have sometimes felt misrepresented by them. A study found that over half of the uploaded papers appear to infringe copyright, because the authors uploaded the publisher's version.
Features
ResearchGate
The New York Times described the site as a mashup of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Site members may follow a research interest, in addition to following other individual members. It has a blogging feature for users to write short reviews on peer-reviewed articles. ResearchGate indexes self-published information on user profiles to suggest members to connect with others who have similar interests. When a member posts a question, it is fielded to others that have identified on their user profile that they have a relevant expertise. It also has private chat rooms where users can share data, edit shared documents, or discuss confidential topics. The site also features a research-focused job board.
As of 2020, it has more than 17 million users, with its largest user-bases coming from Europe and North America. Most of ResearchGate's users are involved in medicine or biology, though it also has participants from engineering, law, computer science, agricultural sciences, and psychology, among others.
ResearchGate published an author-level metric in the form of an "RG Score" since 2012. RG score is not a citation impact measure. RG Scores have been reported to be correlated with existing author-level metrics, but have also been criticized as having questionable reliability and an unknown calculation methodology. In March 2022 ResearchGate announced they would remove the RG Score after July 2022. ResearchGate does not charge fees for putting content on the site and does not require peer review.
History
ResearchGate
ResearchGate was founded in 2008 by virologist Ijad Madisch, who remains the company's CEO, with physician Sören Hofmayer, and computer scientist Horst Fickenscher. It started in Boston, Massachusetts, and moved to Berlin, Germany, shortly afterwards.
The company's first round of funding, in 2010, was led by the venture capital firm Benchmark. Benchmark partner Matt Cohler became a member of the board and participated in the decision to move to Berlin.
The website began with few features, and developed based on input from scientists. From 2009 to 2011, the number of users of the site grew from 25,000 to more than 1 million.
A second round of funding led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund was announced in February 2012. On June 4, 2013, it closed Series C financing arrangements for $35M from investors including Bill Gates.
The company grew from 12 employees in 2011 to 120 in 2014. As of 2016, it had about 300 employees, including a sales staff of 100.
ResearchGate's competitors include Academia.edu, Google Scholar, and Mendeley, as well as new competitors that emerged in the last decade like Semantic Scholar. In 2016, Academia.edu reportedly had more registered users (about 34 million versus 11 million) and higher web traffic, but ResearchGate was substantially larger in terms of active usage by researchers. The fact that ResearchGate restricts its user accounts to people at recognized institutions and published researchers may explain the disparity in active usage, as a high percentage of the accounts on Academia.edu are lapsed or inactive. In a 2015–2016 survey of academic profile tools, about as many respondents have ResearchGate profiles and Google Scholar profiles, but almost twice as many respondents use Google Scholar for search than use ResearchGate for accessing publications.
Madisch has said the company's business strategy is focused on highly targeted advertising based on analysis of the activities of users, saying "Imagine you could click on a microscope mentioned in a paper and buy it", and estimating the spending on science at $1 trillion per year under the control of a "relatively small number of people".
In November 2015 they acquired additional funding of $52.6 million from a range of investors including Goldman Sachs, Benchmark Capital, Wellcome Trust and Bill Gates, but did not announce this until February 2017. Losses increased from €5.4m in 2014 to €6.2m in 2015, but ResearchGate's CEO expressed optimism that they would break even eventually.
ResearchGate, Elsevier and American Chemical Society settled their lawsuit on 15 September 2023.
As of January 2023, ResearchGate has partnered with Sage to distribute open access content.
Reception
ResearchGate
A 2009 article in BusinessWeek reported that ResearchGate was a "potentially powerful link" in promoting innovation in developing countries by connecting scientists from those nations with their peers in industrialized nations. It said the website had become popular largely due to its ease of use. It also said that ResearchGate had been involved in several notable cross-country collaborations between scientists that led to substantive developments.
Academic reception of ResearchGate remains generally positive, as recent reviews of extant literature show an accepting audience with broad coverage of concepts. A 2012 paper published in The International Information & Library Review conducted a survey with 160 respondents and reported that out of those respondents using social networking "for academic purposes", Facebook and ResearchGate were the most popular at the University of Delhi, but also "a majority of respondents said using SNSs [Social Networking Sites] may be a waste of time".
Although ResearchGate is used internationally, its uptake—as of 2014—is uneven, with Brazil having particularly many users and China having few when compared to the number of publishing researchers.
In a 2014 study by Nature, 88 percent of the responding scientists and engineers said that they were aware of ResearchGate and would use it when "contacted", but less than 10% said they would use it to actively discuss research with 40% instead preferring to use Twitter when discussing research. ResearchGate was visited regularly by half of those surveyed by Nature, coming second to Google Scholar. 29 percent of regular visitors had signed up for a profile on ResearchGate in the past year, and 35% of the survey participants were invited by email.
A 2016 article in Times Higher Education reported that in a global survey of 20,670 people who use academic social networking sites, ResearchGate was the dominant network and was twice as popular as others: 61 percent of respondents who had published at least one paper had a ResearchGate profile. Another study reported that "relatively few academics appear to post questions and answers", but instead use it only as an "online CV".
In the context of the big deal cancellations by several library systems in the world, the wide usage of ResearchGate was credited as one of the factors which reduced the apparent value of the subscriptions to toll access resources. Data analysis tools like Unpaywall Journals, used by libraries to calculate the real costs and value of their options before such decisions, allow to separate ResearchGate from open archives like institutional repositories, which are considered more stable.
Criticism
ResearchGate
ResearchGate's decision to not remove convicted sex offenders from its social networking site has been criticized by Canadian authorities. Many researchers world-wide deleted their account in protest as they refused to remove convicted child pornographer and registered sex offender in Canada, Ben Levin as a user. Identified on ResearchGate as "Research Ben", he had been a frequent user of ResearchGate, publishing over 80 papers of interest with the vast majority dealing with studies around child pornography and pedophiles.
ResearchGate has been criticized for emailing unsolicited invitations to the coauthors of its users. These emails were written as if they were personally sent by the user, but were instead sent automatically unless the user opted out, which caused some researchers to boycott the service and contributes to the negative view of ResearchGate in the scientific community. As of November 2016, the site appears to have discontinued this practice. The TechCrunch moderator Mike Butcher accused ResearchGate of having scraped competitors' websites for email addresses to spam, which the ResearchGate CEO denied.
A study published by the Association for Information Systems in 2014 found that a dormant account on ResearchGate, using default settings, generated 297 invitations to 38 people over a 16-month period, and that the user profile was automatically attributed to more than 430 publications. Furthermore, journalists and researchers found that the RG score, calculated by ResearchGate via a proprietary algorithm, can reach high values under questionable circumstances.
Several studies have looked at the RG score, for which details about how it is calculated are not published. These studies concluded that the RG score was "intransparent and irreproducible", criticized the way it incorporates the journal impact factor into the user score, and suggested that it should "not be considered in the evaluation of academics". The results were confirmed in a second "response" study, which also found the score to depend mostly on journal impact factors. The RG score was found to be negatively correlated with network centrality, i.e., that users that are the most active (and thus central to the network) on ResearchGate usually do not have high RG scores. It was also found to be strongly positively correlated with Quacquarelli Symonds university rankings at the institutional level, but only weakly with Elsevier SciVal rankings of individual authors. While it was found to be correlated with different university rankings, the correlation in between these rankings themselves was higher. Nature also reported that "Some of the apparent profiles on the site are not owned by real people, but are created automatically – and incompletely – by scraping details of people's affiliations, publication records and PDFs, if available, from around the web. That annoys researchers who do not want to be on the site, and who feel that the pages misrepresent them – especially when they discover that ResearchGate will not take down the pages when asked." ResearchGate uses a crawler to find PDF versions of articles on the homepages of authors and publishers. These are then presented as if they had been uploaded to the web site by the author: the PDF will be displayed embedded in a frame, and only the button label "External Download" indicates that the file was in fact not uploaded to ResearchGate.
ResearchGate has been criticized for failing to provide safeguards against "the dark side of academic writing", including such phenomena as fake publishers, "ghost journals", publishers with "predatory" publication fees, and fake impact ratings. It has also been criticized for copyright infringement of published works.
In September 2017, lawyers representing the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM) sent a letter to ResearchGate threatening legal action against them for copyright infringement and demanding that they alter their handling of uploaded articles to include pre-release checking for copyright violations and "Specifically, [for ResearchGate to] end its extraction of content from hosted articles and the modification of any hosted content, including any and all metadata. It would also mean an end to Researchgate's own copying and downloading of published journal article content and the creation of internal databases of articles." This was followed by an announcement that takedown requests are to be issued to ResearchGate for copyright infringement relating to millions of articles. A statement supporting the action was issued by a group called Coalition for Responsible Sharing, and the statement was signed by the American Chemical Society, Brill Publishers, Elsevier, Wiley, and Wolters Kluwer. Subsequently, Coalition for Responsible Sharing (CfRS) reported that "ResearchGate has removed from public view a significant number of copyrighted articles it is hosting on its site". CfRS also confirmed that "not all violations have been addressed" and as such, takedown notices have been issued.
ResearchGate has managed to achieve an agreement on article uploading with three other major publishers, Springer Nature, Cambridge University Press and Thieme. Under the agreement, the publishers will be notified when their articles are uploaded but will not be able to premoderate uploads.