ResearchGate

ResearchGate is, like Academia.edu, a free social network where registered users may publish their full texts and monitor their visit rate. Just a remainder: uploading your text here must not violate copyright laws and it also needs to be considered whether the publisher of the final version of the text allows making another variant of the text freely available (preprint, final published version, etc.)

ResearchGate provides to their registered users de facto the same functions as Academia.edu; i.e. you can upload various details about yourself, publish texts, display metrics of visit rate of the texts, etc. Moreover, based on the texts uploaded and their types, ResearchGate determines a so-called RG score for every registered user. This score is a numeric indicator expressing the reputation of the given user in the scholarly world. It is calculated based on the number and type of publications in the profile and their visit rate by other readers. Unlike Academia.edu, ResearchGate offers an extra service by providing information about job offers to registered users. These offers are specifically aimed at the user’s professional specialization and their scope of interest.

How to create a ResearchGate account

Open the address http://www.researchgate.net and either create a new unique account by clicking on the left upper link or a green button Join for free, or you can sign up with your Facebook or Google+ accounts by means of the links under the green button. As a part of the registration process, you enter into the form various information about yourself, such as name, surname, e-mail address, etc.

ResearchGate account

After creating your account, you will log in via the Log in button located in the right upper corner either with your e-mail address and password or through links connecting ResearchGate with Facebook and Google+.

Introducing the author’s profile page

author’s profile page

How to add a record and full text to the author’s profile

  1. On the web page with the author’s profile click on Add your publications to upload texts which were published or on Add unpublished work in case they had not been published.
  2. If you choose unpublished work, a window for selecting the file you want to upload and with a field for entering the title will be displayed. In the event that you choose to upload an already published work, a page with the following menu will appear: Journal articles, Conference papers, All other research. From this menu, you select the respective type of the document (for books select All other research).
    author’s profile
  3. In the event that you select a journal article, a window with four tabs will be displayed. Here you can select one of the following options: choose one of the articles offered by ResearchGate, search for the article yourself, import its record from a citation manager (if you have it saved in this way) or enter it manually. After you select one of the options a window for uploading a file appears.

    author’s profile

    If you want to upload another document than an article, click on Confe renc papers or All other research and a window will display where you can upload a file and write the name of the publication.

Metrics in ResearchGate

  1. If you click on the Stats tab in your profile, the webpage will appear, where you can display a line graph of how many times your texts have been downloaded, their records displayed, cited and your profile visited by means of the tabs Publication downloads, Publication views, Citations and Profile. In the case of citations, the data includes both the number of other texts saved in ResearchGate which cited your texts and the number of texts that you cited.
    Metrics in ResearchGate
  2. Click on the Contributions tab in the author’s profile to display the overview of their publications. When clicking on the title, information about the respective publication will be displayed at the top left, and a link to the full text on the top right (if uploaded before). At the bottom left you will find an overview of publications saved in ResearchGate which you have cited or which cited your text.
    Metrics in ResearchGate
  3. In the RG Score tab, information on the development of your involvement in ResearchGate (the number of publications, communication with other users, etc.) is stored.
    Metrics in ResearchGate

Metrics and statistical information about an institution

On the page with author’s profile click on the logo/name of the institution you work for and the page bellow will appear.

Metrics and statistical information about an institution