Researchgate

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
ResearchGate GmbH

logo
legal form Company with limited liability
founding 2008
Seat Berlin , GermanyGermanyGermany 
management
  • Sören Hofmayer
Number of employees 269 (2017)
sales 10.2 million euros (2017)
Branch science and education
Website researchgate.net
As of December 31, 2017

Researchgate (spelling ResearchGate ) is a commercial social network and database on the Internet for researchers from all areas of science, which is also used as a document server for publications. The commercial service, operated by Researchgate GmbH based in Berlin , was launched in May 2008 and by July 2016 had gained around 10 million members worldwide.

Scientists who want to join the network need an email address from a well-known research institution or have to provide evidence of a scientific publication. Members of the network have a user profile on which they can show the results of their research, including specialist articles , research data , book chapters, negative results, patents , research projects, methods, presentations and source code for computer programs. Members can follow other members and get in touch with them. According to surveys by Nature and Times Higher Education magazines , Researchgate is the most active academic network of its kind.

Functions

In the professional network, users can publish, upload and share specialist articles , exchange ideas on research questions and find research partners . Scientists can also publish raw data , specialist articles and data on "unsuccessful" experiments on the page in order to avoid unnecessary repetition of errors in research. 2012, around 10 million were full texts of articles and 40 million abstracts ( English abstracts ) on the platform available.

Scientists follow their areas of interest, publications and other members and are thus informed about content that is relevant to them. Researchgate indexes information posted by members on their profiles and suggests which scholars, publications, and areas of interest they could follow. A blog feature allows reviews of articles that have already been published. When a researcher asks a question, it is forwarded to members who have indicated expertise in the relevant subject on their profile. The site also has a private messaging function that allows scientists to share research data, collaborate on documents and discuss confidential topics. In a job exchange , users can find international job offers in the fields of research and science.

Researchgate had 10 million users in 2016. Most of them come from Europe and North America. The most frequently represented disciplines are medicine and biology , but the network also has members from engineering , computer science , agricultural sciences and psychology . Researchgate does not charge any peer review or publication fees.

A bibliometric key figure determined by Researchgate itself for measuring scientific reputation , the RG Score , is intended to help scientists to receive feedback in real time and for publications. The system is intended to enable them to make a name for themselves in scientific specialist publications regardless of their publication activity. The metric was found to be comparable to existing bibliometric measures, but was criticized for its questionable reliability and dubious calculation method.

history

Researchgate was founded on April 4, 2008 by the virologist and computer scientist Ijad Madisch together with the doctor Sören Hofmayer and the computer scientist Horst Fickenscher. Madisch continues to serve as the company's CEO . In August 2018, Madisch was appointed to the newly founded 10-member digital council of the German federal government.

The network was founded in Boston (Massachusetts, USA) and moved its headquarters to Berlin (Germany) in 2010.

Older logo

In September 2010, Benchmark Capital , the financier of eBay , AOL and Twitter , and Accel Partners ( Facebook ), two venture capitalists from Silicon Valley invested several million US dollars in the German startup. Benchmark partner Matt Cohler became a member of the supervisory board and was involved in the decision to move to Berlin. According to a report in the New York Times , the network initially had few features and evolved based on user feedback .

In a second round of financing in 2012, the venture capital company Founders Fund, led by Peter Thiel, invested in Researchgate. In June 2013, the Berlin startup closed its third round of financing with a total of 35 million dollars, in which Bill Gates was one of the participants.

According to Madisch, the company's business strategy focuses on user behavioral advertising.

At least until 2016, the company's business was not profitable; the annual loss for 2016 rose to 10.7 million euros.

Researchgate won the German Entrepreneur Award 2012 in the startup category , which is awarded by the Harvard Clubs of Germany . In 2014, the news magazine Focus awarded Researchgate the Digital Innovation of the Year award . In 2014 Researchgate won the German Entrepreneur Award in the special award category .

In terms of technology, Researchgate uses the open COinS standard on the publication pages .

Many science organizations and institutions, including the International Academy of Life Sciences , the European Science Foundation and the Society for Virology , use Researchgate as a platform for communication between members and participants. The best-known German customer is the Max Planck Society , which operates an internal network with the help of Researchgate.

reception

In March 2014 media reports appeared that Researchgate was instrumental in refuting an alleged sensation in stem cell research (the so-called STAP cell ). However, in traditional media such as the journal Nature , corresponding reviews were published in February and an investigation was initiated.

In a 2014 survey published in Nature , the network was known to 88 percent of those questioned. Of these, 10 percent of users say they use the site when they are contacted, and 40 percent replied that they prefer the microblogging service Twitter for scientific exchange . Researchgate was regularly visited by half of the respondents, making it the second most used site after the literature search service Google Scholar . 29 percent of the regular visitors had registered in the previous year and 35 percent of the respondents had received an invitation by email .

In a 2016 survey of 20,670 participants worldwide by Times Higher Education magazine , Researchgate was named as the leading network, making it twice as popular as the second most widely used academic network Academia.edu : 61 percent of those surveyed with at least one published scientific publication said they had To have Researchgate profile. According to another study, most scientists did not use the network to post questions and answers but as an online résumé.

criticism

Spam

The site has been criticized for sending unsolicited invitations by email to co-authors of scientific articles that give the impression that the author of the paper himself sent them. There was also criticism of what appeared to be automatically created profiles of scientists who felt they were being misrepresented.

If a Researchgate user does not change the preset settings of his account, the co-authors of the publications he has registered with Researchgate will be prompted with automatically generated e-mails to also register with Researchgate. These "invitations" give the impression of having been initiated by the user, although they are generated without his or her intervention. An account was set up by a professor at Kennesaw State University but not actively used. 431 publications (most of them wrong, apparently due to identical names) and thus 258 co-authors (1 correct) were automatically added to this “sleeping” account within 16 months. As part of this, Researchgate sent 297 invitations by email to 38 people, all of which without user interaction (none of these users joined the platform). Because of this aggressive email advertising , some researchers are boycotting the website.

Data quality

The platform makes it possible to assign third-party publications by authors with similar names - intentionally or accidentally - to your own profile. In the Kennesaw State University experiment, 431 publications were automatically assigned to the "sleeping" account after 16 months (only six of them correctly assigned; however, on the website this is presented as if the user had actively added these publications, although this was done automatically) is).

Metrics

Researchgate publishes its own bibliometric key figure, called the RG Score . The exact formula is not documented and has changed several times over time. In addition to the classic impact factor , the activity of a user on the platform is also included here (see gamification ). However, the RG score is criticized as "not meaningful" and "not objective". In the above study from Kennesaw State University, the v. a. was carried out in 2013, a “sleeping” account with no activity by the owner achieved an RG score of 45.70 and was thus in the 97% quantile of the platform. Researchers at the University of Wolverhampton have examined the correlation of the RG score and other bibliometrics using the university ranking. While the ranking based on the RG score was positively correlated with the other rankings (well below 0.5, mostly around 0.3; so by no means random), the other rankings are significantly more strongly correlated with one another (mostly above 0.5 to above 0.7). The "Impact Points" used for the RG Score - an aggregation of the Impact Factor - were also more strongly correlated with the established rankings (+0.1 to +0.3 stronger), while the RG Score had the strongest relationship (0.970). with the RG views (a measure of how often the metadata of the article is accessed).

In 2016, the key figure Impact points was replaced by the publication of the h-index .

copyright

If researchers upload their publications as suggested by the platform, they may infringe the rights of use of the publisher that originally published the publication. Researchgate recommends uploading without pointing out any such issues. Researchgate's point of view is that many publishers allow the publication of articles (possibly only preliminary versions) on an author's personal website, and the Researchgate profile represents such a personal homepage.

In 2017, the American Chemical Society and the publisher Elsevier filed a lawsuit against ResearchGate for copyright infringement at the Munich Regional Court. On October 2, 2018, Elsevier and the American Chemical Association filed a second lawsuit against Researchgate in the United States.

A study in the scientific journal Scientometrics by Hamid R. Jamali from 2017 showed that of a sample of 500 articles published as full text on Researchgate, 21.6% had been published as open access . Of the remaining 392 articles, 51.3% were found to have copyright infringements.

Predefined profiles

A researcher reported on Deutschlandfunk that Researchgate created her profile without her consent. She wasn't even registered there. Researchgate creates these - often incomplete - profiles with the help of web crawlers and PDF documents and does not remove the profiles created in this way on request.

See also

Web links

Commons : Researchgate  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Annual financial statements for the 2017 financial year of ResearchGate GmbH. In: Bundesanzeiger , May 8, 2019, accessed in the company register on February 14, 2020.
  2. ↑ "researchgate.net" analysis. September 2019 Overview. SimilarWeb , September 2019, accessed October 14, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b Brexit: Berlin eyes Britain's tech talent - BBC News. Retrieved July 7, 2016 (UK English).
  4. ^ Signing up for ResearchGate - Support - ResearchGate. In: explore.researchgate.net. Retrieved July 7, 2016 .
  5. ^ A b c Richard Van Noorden: Online collaboration: Scientists and the social network . In: Nature . tape 512 , no. 7513 , August 14, 2014, p. 126–129 , doi : 10.1038 / 512126a ( nature.com [accessed July 7, 2016]).
  6. ↑ a b c d Do academic social networks share academics' interests? In: timeshighereducation.com . April 6, 2016, accessed July 7, 2016 .
  7. ^ Cracking Open the Scientific Process
  8. ^ Rogue Med Student Tackles the Web's Ultimate Irony
  9. ^ The Economist: Professor Facebook , 2012
  10. ^ New York Times: Cracking Open the Scientific Process , 2012
  11. ^ A b Diane Rasmussen Neal: Social Media for Academics: A Practical Guide . Elsevier, 2012, ISBN 978-1-78063-319-0 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  12. ↑ a b Thomas Lin: 'Open Science' Challenges Journal Tradition With Web Collaboration . In: The New York Times . January 16, 2012, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed July 7, 2016]).
  13. ^ A b Quentin Hardy: Failure Is the Next Opportunity. Retrieved July 7, 2016 .
  14. ↑ a b Professors of the Next Generation . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , August 29, 2012.
  15. ^ A b Mark Scott: Europeans Look Beyond Their Borders. Retrieved July 7, 2016 .
  16. ↑ American Institute of Biological Sciences: BioScience. In: BioScience. January 1, 1964, ISSN  0006-3568 ( worldcat.org [accessed July 7, 2016]).
  17. ↑ Kerry A. Dolan: How Ijad Madisch Aims To Disrupt Science Research With A Social Network. Retrieved July 7, 2016 .
  18. ^ ResearchGate introduces RG Score, Klout for boffins .
  19. ↑ Mike Thelwall, Kayvan Kousha: ResearchGate: Disseminating, communicating, and measuring Scholarship? In: Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology . tape 66 , no. 5 , May 1, 2015, ISSN  2330-1643 , p. 876-889 , doi : 10.1002 / asi.23236 ( wiley.com [accessed July 7, 2016]).
  20. ↑ Wolfgang W. Merkel: We want to change the way researchers think. In: The world . January 11, 2014, accessed on October 12, 2019 (interview with Ijad Madisch).
  21. ↑ Federal Government | Article | Digital advice - experts who drive us. Retrieved August 22, 2018 .
  22. ↑ Martin Weigert: ResearchGATE receives millions from Silicon Valley . Netzwertig.com, September 8, 2010.
  23. ↑ a b Founders Fund invests in the Facebook for scientists: Founder Ijad Madisch on confidence, Luke Nosek, and what the world needs more of | HEUREKA magazine. February 22, 2012, Retrieved July 7, 2016 (American English).
  24. ↑ Bill Gates joins the Berlin startup ResearchGate . In: bild.de . June 4, 2013 ( bild.de ).
  25. ↑ Alexander Hüsing: Researchgate: Loss increases by 73.3% - to 10.7 million. In: deutsche-startups.de. June 12, 2018. Retrieved July 17, 2018 .
  26. ↑ Winner - German Entrepreneur Award 2012 . Archived from the original on November 16, 2013. Retrieved October 18, 2013.
  27. ↑ Innovations: ResearchGate, YouPickIt and SAP honored . January 21, 2014. Retrieved March 24, 2014.
  28. ↑ In the network of science . Retrieved September 22, 2014.
  29. ↑ ResearchGATE now supports COinS .
  30. ^ Matthias Hohensee: Facebook of knowledge . In: WirtschaftsWoche , September 22, 2010.
  31. ↑ Alex Hofmann: How Researchgate Helped Uncover a Major Research Flaw . In: Gründerszene Magazin . April 2, 2014 ( gruenderszene.de ).
  32. ↑ Jürgen Stüber: ResearchGate makes stem cell research transparent . March 14, 2014 ( morgenpost.de ).
  33. ↑ Joachim Müller-Jung: First successes, but falsified ?: The stem cell spectacle . In: FAZ.NET . April 1, 2014, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net ).
  34. ↑ David Cyranoski: Acid-bath stem-cell study under investigation . In: Nature , February 17, 2014, doi: 10.1038 / nature.2014.14738
  35. ↑ Katy Jordan: Exploring the Research Gate score as an academic metric: Reflections and implications for practice. (PDF) Retrieved July 7, 2016 .
  36. ↑ Uwe Böhme, Silke Tesch: Academic and networked . In: News from chemistry . tape 64 , no. 12 , 2016, ISSN  1868-0054 , p. 1180–1184 , doi : 10.1002 / nadc.20164053034 ( wiley.com [accessed August 21, 2020]).
  37. ↑ a b c Rebecca Parker: Beware of enemies masquerading as friends: ResearchGate and co. Swinburne University of Technology Library, January 6, 2014, accessed April 10, 2014 .
  38. ^ A b c d Meg Murray: Analysis of a Scholarly Social Networking Site: The Case of the Dormant User . In: Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the Southern Association for Information Systems (SAIS) . 2014 (English, aisnet.org [PDF]).
  39. ^ A b Richard Van Noorden: Online collaboration: Scientists and the social network . In: Nature . No. 512, August 2014, pp. 126–129. doi : 10.1038 / 512126a .
  40. ↑ Katja Bosse, Gustav Beyer: Dr. Fantastic - Page 4/4: What does “Research Gate” bring? Die Zeit , November 6, 2014, accessed on November 9, 2014 : "Critics say the score is not meaningful and the system is not objective."
  41. ↑ Mike Thelwall, Kayvan Kousha: ResearchGate: Disseminating, Communicating and Measuring Scholarship? In: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology . 2014 (English, wlv.ac.uk [PDF]).
  42. ↑ Danielle Bengsch: Introducing the h-index on ResearchGate , March 8, 2016
  43. ↑ Manfred Dworschak: Facebook for researchers . In: Der Spiegel . No. 14 , 2010, p. 114-115 ( online ).
  44. ↑ Scientific publishers take action against Researchgate . In: Capital.de . November 14, 2017 ( capital.de [accessed February 26, 2018]).
  45. ^ Diana Kwon: Major Publishers File Second Lawsuit Against Research Gate. The Scientist. October 9, 2018, accessed October 11, 2018 .
  46. ↑ Katrin Schmermund: Another lawsuit against ResearchGate. Elsevier and the American Chemical Association are on trial. Scientists bypassed the payment barriers on an online platform. Research & Teaching. October 11, 2018, accessed October 11, 2018 .
  47. ↑ Hamid R. Jamali: Copyright compliance and infringement in ResearchGate full-text journal articles . In: Scientometrics . tape 112 , no. 1 , July 1, 2017, ISSN  1588-2861 , p. 241-254 , doi : 10.1007 / s11192-017-2291-4 .
  48. ^ Anneke Meyer: A social network for researchers. In: Current Research. Deutschlandfunk, October 27, 2014, accessed on October 28, 2014 : “'I find it particularly interesting that I already have a profile there - although I'm not a member there - and that makes me a bit concerned.' Even if not everyone likes the practice, from a legal point of view, pre-established profiles are no problem. "