ResearchGate

Social media café - 1 December 2016

Wageningen UR Library - Ellen Fest & Hugo Besemer

Program

7 Questions about ResearchGate Panel:

●Liping Weng (Department of Soil Quality)●Ana Lopez Contreras (Food & Biobased Research)●Viet Nguyen (Operations Research and Logistics)

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Thanks for your questions!

1.What can ResearchGate do with my data, what are the risks?

2.What about copyrights and open access?!

3.Who is on ResearchGate?

4.Do I get reliable answers to my questions?

5.What is the difference with other networks, like Academia.edu?

6.What is the value of the ResearchGate score

7.How does ResearchGate relate to ORCID, Linkedin etcetera and how do we maintain those profiles?

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Q1: What can ResearchGate do with my data, what are the risks?

Terms of use●German law applies●ResearchGate presents itself as a service that

enables the users (you) to present information●ResearchGate can not provide data to third parties●You "indemnify" ResearchGate for copyright

infringements

Sounds to good to be true, how do they make their money?

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So how do they make their money?

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“What is ResearchGate's business model to monetize in the long run? Will the service stay free?

Yes, the service will always stay free for scientists. First of all, as stated in our terms, we are not allowed to sell our users' data to any third party which is also not a good idea, if you want to make money in a sensible way. The first idea is to offer featured and targeted job postings. We already started that: Companies or research institutions can post their job openings for free, but if they want to get more visibility, they have to pay. Secondly, we give scientific conferences the opportunity to market their events. And finally, we want to create a marketplace for scientific products and services. Very similar to Amazon, but for viruses, bacterias, cell cultures etc. So we show researchers where they can buy their laboratory supplies and give them the opportunity to give feedback to vendors and review the products. “

interview with Ijad Madisch co-founder of ResearchGate (17/1/2014; http://dld-conference.com/articles/connecting-the-dots-of-science)

Yet another risk: they pretend they are you.....

Q2: What about copyrights and open access?! Important: copyright rules allow making/sharing copies for personal

use. ● So.... You can always have the reference in your profile, and

answer requests Normal copyright rules apply, before uploading check

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/● Uploading Open Access publications is a way to get them

covered in Google Scholar

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Q2: What about copyrights and open access?! Important: copyright rules allow making/sharing copies for personal

use. ● So.... You can always have the reference in your profile, and

answer requests Normal copyright rules apply, before uploading check

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/● Uploading Open Access publications is a way to get them

covered in Google Scholar Other publications: depends on agreements You => Wageningen UR

● If you / your client wants publications to be in the public domain please consider creative commons licenses

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(more information)

Q3: Who is on ResearchGate?

High profile European researchers seem to be missing Junior faculty members show high activity Broad survey showed academia.edu slightly more

popular than ResearchGate ResearchGate more popular in India, South Africa,

Andean countries

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Sources:• Thelwall, Mike, and Kayvan Kousha. "ResearchGate: Disseminating, communicating, and measuring

Scholarship?." Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 66.5 (2015): 876-889. http://cba.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/papers/ResearchGate.pdf

• Thelwall, M., & Kousha, K. (2015). ResearchGate Articles: Age, Discipline, Audience Size and Impact1, 1–20. http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/papers/ResearchGateArticles_preprint.pdf (see also literature review)

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Subjects & papers

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Countries

Q4: Do I get reliable answers to my questions?

Beyond the anecdotal, there is a piece of research that we found:

●Positive correlation with ResearchGate Score●Positive correlation with length of answer●Positive correlation with references●Positive correlation with factual information●Negative correlation with “chatiness”

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Li, Lei, et al. "Answer Quality Characteristics and Prediction on an Academic Q&A Site: A Case Study on ResearchGate." Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion. International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee, 2015. http://www.www2015.it/documents/proceedings/companion/p1453.pdf

Q5: What is the difference with other scholarly networks?

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Adapted from:- Wee, Joan. “Research Network.” http://en.slideshare.net/ntunmg/research-network-30833267- Aventurier, Pascal. "Academic social networks: Challenges and opportunities.

http://www.slideshare.net/paventurier/academic-social-networks-challenges-and-opportunities

Q5: What is the difference with other scholarly networks?

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Adapted from:- Wee, Joan. “Research Network.” http://en.slideshare.net/ntunmg/research-network-30833267- Aventurier, Pascal. "Academic social networks: Challenges and opportunities.

http://www.slideshare.net/paventurier/academic-social-networks-challenges-and-opportunities

Q6: RG-metrics: use it or not?

• full text or summary of all types read• downloads of file on RG→ reads breakdown for more details

Q6: RG-metrics: use it or not?

• based on the publication in the RG-database

• exact coverage unclear

Q6: RG-metrics: use it or not?

The cumulative journal impact factors of the publications

Q6: RG-metrics: use it or not?

RG-score:• calculated by RG• not fully disclosed• based on contributions,

interactions and reputation

Q6: RG-metrics: use it or not?

1 Kraker, P., & Lex, E. (2015). A Critical Look at the ResearchGate Score as a Measure of Scientific Reputation. In ASCW’15 Workshop at Web Science 2015 (pp. 7–9).

Serious short-comings:

The score is not transparent and irreproducible1

The score incorporates the journal impact factor to evaluate individual researchers1

Changes in the score cannot be reconstructed1

Coverage for citations is limited and not defined

Q7: Can I exchange data with other profiles?

no exchange of data with LinkedIN send pubs from Staff Publications/GS to RG via RIS-export

(limited) import from reference manager (limited)

alternative for complete publication overview: ORCID

Take home message: where to invest time?

ORCID → complete publication overviewwhere your audience is?

●companies, government → LinkedIN●scientists → ResearchGate …

LinkedIN-profile or We@wur-page for visibility on the web

ResearchGate → networking with peers

Questions?

This presentation is also available on:http://www.slideshare.net/hugobesemerhttp://www.slideshare.net/EllenFest

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The case of the dormant user

Information on author profiles and social networks is at available at the Library's website