researchgate publication guidelines

Lydon and O'Leary libraries will be closing at 2:00pm on Wednesday, July 3rd , and will be closed on Thursday, July 4th . If you have any questions, please contact [email protected] .

• University of Massachusetts Lowell
• University Libraries

ResearchGate

• Sending Invitations
• ResearchGate Profile
• Publications
• Question & Answer

Quick Links

• Join ResearchGate (free)
• ResearchGate Help
• ResearchGate News
• ResearchGate Recruiting

Join ResearchGate

ResearchGate can connect you with content and researchers that you’ll find valuable to your own work.

ResearchGate is a social networking site connecting researchers throughout the world by allowing them to share publications, and information. This guide provides an introduction to ResearchGate and contains information about some of the most useful features to help researchers and professors creating a ResearchGate profile.  ​

ResearchGate  was started by two researchers Dr. Ijad Madisch and Dr. Sören Hofmayer, and computer scientist Horst Fickenscher.  ResearchGate today has more than 7 million members. 

Here's a quick tour of a ResearchGate profile

A ResearchGate profile is an overview of a researcher’s work: their publications, professional expertise, institutions, contributions, and all the questions they have answered on the website. Researchers can show their peers current projects. 

Here is an example of a ResearchGate Profile.

Researcher: Yuanchang Xie

Screenshot of Yuanchang Xie’s profile was taken on the 20th of July 2015.

Publication is one of the most useful features on ResearchGate: whether you are adding your research (Journal articles, conference papers,etc.), looking for research in your field, or downloading other researcher’s work.

Here is an example of ResearchGate publications.

Screenshot of Yuanchang Xie’s profile was taken on the 20th of July 2015

Ask research-related questions answered by other specialists. Share your knowledge, connect with researchers, and identify yourself as an expert in your field.

• Next: Signing up >>
• Last Updated: Oct 31, 2022 1:50 PM
• URL: https://libguides.uml.edu/c.php?g=334810

Scholarly Publications: Creating and Maintaining a ResearchGate Profile

• Getting Started
• Editing your Profile
• Adding Publications

Adding full text to publications on ResearchGate

Academic journal copyright policies.

• Check which versions of a publication, if any, you may post on ResearchGate using the Posting Journal Articles Online guide .  Please only post the full-text of articles that have been published in journals that allow you to do so.

If you have questions you may find the following ResearchGate link helpful.

How to add research (researchgate.net)

If you are using a mobile device, you can also view a PDF version of this guide with screenshots .

In general, authors who publish articles in academic journals are required to sign a copyright transfer agreement, which grants the journal's publisher copyright for the article.  This limits whether the full text of an article can be posted on sites like ResearchGate (citations for any article may be posted anywhere, including RG).  

The guide below contains a chart with guidelines detailing whether articles from specific journals may be posted on ResearchGate.

• Scholarly Publications: Posting Journal Articles Online by Heather Enderle Last Updated May 20, 2021 159 views this year
• << Previous: Adding Publications
• Last Updated: Apr 4, 2023 9:51 AM
• URL: https://darden.libguides.com/researchgate

Darden Camp Library, First Floor, 100 Darden Blvd., Darden Business School, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903 Mailing Address: Darden Camp Library, PO Box 6550, Charlottesville, VA 22906-6550  Google Map with Darden Library Email: [email protected]    Phone: (434) 924-7321   FAX: (434) 924-3533

Darden Portal   |  Darden Homepage   |  UVA Homepage

Stack Exchange Network

Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow , the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.

Q&A for work

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

Is it legal to add your publications to ResearchGate?

I recently created a profile on ResearchGate . And to add your publications list it requires you to upload the paper. Is it legal to upload published journal articles on public servers, where everyone can download it for free?

• publications
• social-media

• 13 it requires you to upload the paper — Actually, the software only requires you to upload a PDF file. If you're worried about legality of uploading a paper, you can always upload a substitute PDF file containing the sentence "This paper is available from the publisher at (url/DOI)." –  JeffE Commented Aug 30, 2015 at 18:37
• 11 You don't even have to upload your papers. Or did they change anything in the past couple of days? –  choener Commented Aug 30, 2015 at 21:05
• 6 Don't use researchgate at all. They are spammers & There are only students there, no experts. And everybody uses Google Scholar to search, so simply upload it on your personal home page / institutional repository if permitted by the license agreement. –  Has QUIT--Anony-Mousse Commented Oct 3, 2016 at 16:58
• 1 @nxkryptor Are you going to select one answer among the ones having been published? –  Vicent Commented Nov 2, 2016 at 9:25
• 2 @Anony-Mousse in my field, plenty of senior scholars are on ResearchGate, and it's the first place many people look for things. –  Flyto Commented Dec 15, 2016 at 7:45

6 Answers 6

First of all, as far as I know, ResearchGate does not require uploading PDF files in order to add your research work to your profile in this website. However, it is very important to explore the possibility of uploading them, as it gives more visibility to your research and makes it available to more people. That is why I think your question is very interesting.

As @AnonymousMathematician and @gawdzilla already said, it all depends on the policy and agreements established by the publisher. You should ask the publisher. Period.

Now, I want to add some extra information about the alternatives we have to share our research without breaking any publishing agreement or rule.

Normally, there are several versions of a paper till it gets finally published:

a. The editor version : This is the final version of the paper, as it is published in the journal, with all the copyright stuff and so on. It is the final PDF , let us say, the one you normally keep as a record of your research.

b. The author version : This normally refers to an accepted version of the manuscript. It is the version that is finally qualified by the reviewers and accepted to publish by the editor. It is just your manuscript, just raw text (and tables and figures and so on), not usually formatted with the final journal style. Sometimes it is also called a postprint version .

c. A preprint version: It is also a sort of author version, but it usually refers to the submitted manuscript version before the reviewers do their job. It is the first (submitted) version of your manuscript.

So, in fact, I've listed them in a sort of reverse chronological order. :D

Now, if you want to make your research as visible and accessible as possible in ResearchGate (or other scientific social networks such as Academia.edu , etc.), which possibilities do you have? Let us see:

• You can upload the final (editor) version of your paper, as long as the publisher allows you to do that, but I do not think this happens very often. [Actually, there are some journals that follow an open-access policy, meaning that the authors keep the copyright of their work. But, anyway, you have to follow and stick to the final publishing agreement and see if you are allowed to distribute your paper by yourself, etc.]

If not, you do have other options:

You can upload the author version. You should also check with the publisher if you are allowed to do so. Sometimes there is an embargo or vesting period and, after that period, you are allowed to publish or distribute the author version of your paper on your own.

You can upload the preprint version. Publishers normally allow authors to publish or distribute preprints of their manuscripts, normally as technical reports. Anyway, you should ask the publisher, just in case.

If none of the above options apply, then you always have the option of adding this text at the end of the 'abstract' field in the ResearchGate record for your paper:

[ Full text available at http://... ]

Now, I want to add some practical examples from my own experience. Hope it helps.

In my case, I usually publish the preprint version of my papers as technical reports in the official repository of my university department . It is a quite common practice among some researchers in my field. Among other benefits, it prevents evil reviewers or editors to copy or plagiarise your research. Anyway, as I told you above, you should check with the publisher whether you are allowed to do so or not.

Now, this is an example of case (3): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273349919_Optimal_Design_of_Pre-control_Plans , which contains a preprint version of this article that was already published as a technical report.

And here you have an example of case (4): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45101373_Predicting_the_duration_of_chemotherapy-induced_neutropenia_new_scores_and_validation , which contains the abstract for this article I have coauthored. I will upload the author version in February 2017, when the 36-month embargo period finishes, according to the publisher rules. [Well, it is not actually an example of case (4), as you can see a full version of a preprint in this ResearchGate record. But the preprint is quite different from the final version in this case, so when I am allowed to upload the author version, it will replace the current preprint version.]

As a final remark, please, notice that it is not technically the same publish a research paper than just disseminate , distribute or propagate it. However, I have used them as synonyms in this answer, as sometimes it makes no real difference in the context of your question. [Actually, I think (I am not sure of this) that what you do in ResearchGate when you upload an author or a preprint version of a paper you have coauthored is not techincally publishing it...]

Hope it helps. Any comments to this answer will be welcomed. It is always good to learn new things... :)

• 1 @nxkryptor This should be the correct answer. –  Astor Florida Commented Jul 14, 2016 at 9:36

Is it legal to upload published journal articles on public servers, where everyone can download it for free?

It depends on the publishing agreement you signed, which should specify which rights the authors and the publisher hold. The allocation of rights depends on the journal (and the field you are working in), and sometimes there are modifications or addenda for a specific paper.

You should keep copies of the publishing agreements for your papers, precisely so you can refer to them at times like this. If you don't have them, you can get an approximation by looking on the journal's website to see what their current policies are. The policies could have changed over time (and in principle the publisher could still enforce a stricter policy you agreed to in the past), but it's probably safe to post a paper online if the publisher allows it as part of the current publishing agreement. If you're feeling nervous, you could always ask the publisher whether you could follow the terms of the current publishing agreement for your paper that was published long ago.

• 6 You can check on Sherpa/Romeo the standard policy of most publishers, even if it does not replace completely checking what you signed. –  Benoît Kloeckner Commented Aug 31, 2015 at 13:04
• 1 Researchgate recently added a binding arbitration clause to their terms of service, taking effect 1 Dec 2017. I stronger encourage people to delete their accounts. –  daaxix Commented Nov 8, 2017 at 11:32

As mentioned in the other answers, it depends on your contract with your publisher.

http://www.howcanishareit.com/ indicates given a DOI whether a paper may be shared on ResearchGate or similar websites:

Also, as Benoît Kloeckner mentions in a comment, the RoMEO Journals database contains thousands of journals, labeled with their archiving policy ( preprint / postprint /publisher's version):

Except of the database:

Of course, your contract is the reference, whereas those two resources are just approximations.

PS: ResearchGate has quite a bad reputation due to its spam/impersonation/etc. tendencies e.g. see Should I send a "cease-and-desist" letter to ResearchGate?

In most cases, is not legal at all. Normally you should only post the author version or post-print which is an accepted version of the manuscript. And always respect the embargo period (12-24 months...) Anyway, you should always check your Copyright Transfer Agreement. In many cases it's legal to post the author version in your institutional repository but not in ResearchGate

I've attended publishing talks from publishers. As advised by some above, it is necessary to check with the publisher for publishing guidelines.

Usually, you have to wait for the paper to be published. Then, if the publisher allows, you can upload your manuscript copy.

BUT do always check with the publisher in question to avoid violating any terms.

When you published your paper, you did transfer the copyright to the publisher. You did have to at least agree to, or even sign the "Copyright transfer form". It is a legal contract, and it governs your rights, depending on the publisher/journal policy.

Different publishers have different (default) policies regarding the rights, retained by the authors (I am talking here about Springer, Elsevier, IEEE, etc.) Some of them allow you the publication of your paper on your page, but not on specialized sites (like Researchgate), since those are their direct competition. Some of them allow you only the publication of final submitted manuscript, before publisher's editing was applied, on your web page, etc.

Please read the copyright policy of individual journal or even better, publisher. In case of conference papers, it depends on the publisher of the proceedings - if the organizers did publish the proceedings themselves without the external publishing house, ask them (but usually they will be fine with publication elsewhere).

So, to sum up:

1) Read what you signed when you submitted your paper to the journal/conference - the "Copyright transfer form" 2) if 1) is impractical or impossible, check the copyright policy of the journal/proceedings publisher. 3) As a last resort, ask the publisher.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for browse other questions tagged publications journals copyright social-media ..

• Featured on Meta
• Bringing clarity to status tag usage on meta sites
• We've made changes to our Terms of Service & Privacy Policy - July 2024
• Announcing a change to the data-dump process

Hot Network Questions

• Which programming language/environment pioneered row-major array order?
• Story where character has "boomerdisc"
• Running fully sheathed romex through a media box
• Running different laser diodes using a single DC Source
• Reusing own code at work without losing licence
• How does \vdotswithin work?
• If inflation/cost of living is such a complex difficult problem, then why has the price of drugs been absoultly perfectly stable my whole life?
• Optimal Bath Fan Location
• Is Intuitionism Indispensable in Mathematics?
• Do the amplitude and frequency of gravitational waves emitted by binary stars change as the stars get closer together?
• Could someone tell me what this part of an A320 is called in English?
• Does Vexing Bauble counter taxed 0 mana spells?
• Parse Minecraft's VarInt
• How to establish this generalization rule in sequent calculus for First Order Logic?
• Why an Out Parameter can be left unassigned in .NET 6 but not .NET 8 (CS0177)?
• Recovering data from a phone that won't boot
• What is the difference between using a resistor or a capacitor as current limiter?
• How could Bangladesh protect itself from Indian dams and barrages?
• A very interesting food chain
• Why did General Leslie Groves evade Robert Oppenheimer's question here?
• `Drop` for list of elements of different dimensions
• Why does a halfing's racial trait lucky specify you must use the next roll?
• Using "no" at the end of a statement instead of "isn't it"?
• What explanations can be offered for the extreme see-sawing in Montana's senate race polling?

ResearchGate and Google Scholar: how much do they differ in publications, citations and different metrics and why?

• Published: 27 January 2022
• Volume 127 , pages 1515–1542, ( 2022 )

Cite this article

• Vivek Kumar Singh   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7348-6545 1 ,
• Satya Swarup Srichandan 1 &
• Hiran H. Lathabai 1  

3094 Accesses

17 Citations

34 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

ResearchGate has emerged as a popular professional network for scientists and researchers in a very short span. Similar to Google Scholar, the ResearchGate indexing uses an automatic crawling algorithm that extracts bibliographic data, citations, and other information about scholarly articles from various sources. However, it has been observed that the two platforms often show different publication and citation data for the same institutions, journals, and authors. While several previous studies analysed different aspects of ResearchGate and Google Scholar, the quantum of differences in publications, citations, and metrics between the two and the probable reasons for the same are not explored much. This article, therefore, attempts to bridge this research gap by analysing and measuring the differences in publications, citations, and different metrics of the two platforms for a large data set of highly cited authors. The results indicate that there are significantly high differences in publications and citations for the same authors captured by the two platforms, with Google Scholar having higher counts for a vast majority of the cases. The different metrics computed by the two platforms also differ in their values, showing different degrees of correlation. The coverage policy, indexing errors, author attribution mechanism, and strategy to deal with predatory publishing are found to be the main probable reasons for the differences in the two platforms.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Researchgate versus google scholar: which finds more early citations, eugene garfield’s scholarly impact: a scientometric review, the challenges to expand bibliometric studies from periodical literature to monographic literature with a new data source: the book citation index, explore related subjects.

• Artificial Intelligence

https://www.researchgate.net/ .

https://www.researchgate.net/press .

http://scholar.google.com .

https://scholar.google.com/intl/us/scholar/help.html#coverage .

https://scholar.googleblog.com/2014/08/fresh-look-of-scholar-profiles.html .

https://www.webometrics.info/en/hlargerthan100 .

https://explore.researchgate.net/display/support/RG+Score .

Aguillo, I. F. (2012). Is Google Scholar useful for bibliometrics? A webometric analysis. Scientometrics, 91 (2), 343–351.

Article   Google Scholar  

Banshal, S. K., Singh, V. K., & Muhuri, P. K. (2021). Can altmetric mentions predict later citations? A test of validity on data from ResearchGate and three social media platforms. Online Information Review, 45 (3), 517–536. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-11-2019-0364

Bar-Illan, J. (2008). Which h-index? A comparison of WoS, scopus and google scholar. Scientometrics, 74 (2), 257–271.

Beall, J. (2014). Google scholar is filled with junk science. Scholarly Open Access. Retrieved from: https://www.emeraldcityjournal.com/2014/11/google-scholar-is-filled-with-junk-science/ .

Bohannon, J. (2014). Google Scholar wins raves—But can it be trusted? Science, 343 , 6166. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.343.6166.14

Borrego, Á. (2017). Institutional repositories versus ResearchGate: The depositing habits of Spanish researchers. Learned Publishing, 30 (3), 185–192. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1099

Copiello, S. (2019). Research Interest: another undisclosed (and redundant) algorithm by ResearchGate. Scientometrics, 120 , 351–360. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03124-w

Copiello, S., & Bonifaci, P. (2018). A few remarks on ResearchGate score and academic reputation. Scientometrics, 114 , 301–306. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2582-9

Copiello, S., & Bonifaci, P. (2019). ResearchGate Score, full-text research items, and full-text reads: A follow-up study. Scientometrics, 119 , 1255–1262. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03063-6

De Winter, J. C., Zadpoor, A. A., & Dodou, D. (2014). The expansion of Google Scholar versus web of science: A longitudinal study. Scientometrics, 98 (2), 1547–1565.

Ebrahimzadeh, S., Rezaei, S., Sharifabadi, K. A., Kamran, M., & Dalkir, K. (2020). Triggers and strategies related to the collaborative information-seeking behaviour of researchers in ResearchGate. Online Information Review, 44 (5), 1077.

Egghe, L. (2006). An improvement of the h-index: The g-index. ISSI Newsletter, 2 (1), 8–9.

MathSciNet   Google Scholar  

Falagas, M. E., Pitsouni, E. I., Malietzis, G. A., & Pappas, G. (2008). Comparison of PubMed, Scopus, web of science, and Google scholar: Strengths and weaknesses. The FASEB Journal, 22 (2), 338–342.

Gusenbauer, M. (2019). Google Scholar to overshadow them all? Comparing the sizes of 12 academic search engines and bibliographic databases. Scientometrics, 118 , 177–214. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2958-5

Halevi, G., Moed, H., & Bar-Ilan, J. (2017). Suitability of Google Scholar as a source of scientific information and as a source of data for scientific evaluation—Review of the literature. Journal of Informetrics, 11 (3), 823–834.

Harzing, A. W., & Alakangas, S. (2016). Google Scholar, Scopus and the Web of Science: A longitudinal and cross-disciplinary comparison. Scientometrics, 106 (2), 787–804.

Jacso, P. (2005). As we may search—comparison of major features of the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar citation-based and citation-enhanced databases. Current Science, 89 (9), 1537–1547.

Google Scholar  

Jacsó, P. (2008). The pros and cons of computing the h-index using Google Scholar. Online Information Review, 32 (3), 437–452.

Jacsó, P. (2012). Google Scholar Metrics for Publications: The software and content features of a new open access bibliometric service. Online Information Review, 36 (4), 604–619.

Jamali, H. R. (2017). Copyright compliance and infringement in ResearchGate full-text journal articles. Scientometrics, 112 (1), 241–254.

Jamali, H. R., & Nabavi, M. (2015). Open access and sources of full-text articles in Google Scholar in different subject fields. Scientometrics, 105 (3), 1635–1651.

Jordan, K. (2015). Exploring the ResearchGate score as an academic metric: reflections and implications for practice. In: Quantifying and Analysing Scholarly Communication on the Web (ASCW’15), Oxford.

Kolata, G. (2017). Many academics are eager to publish in worthless journals. The New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/science/predatory-journals-academics.html .

Kraker, P., & Lex, E. (2015). A critical look at the ResearchGate score as a measure of scientific reputation. In Proceedings of the quantifying and analysing scholarly communication on the web workshop (ASCW’15), Web Science conference.

Lathabai, H. H. (2020). ψ-index: A new overall productivity index for actors of science and technology. Journal of Informetrics, 14 (4), 101096.

Lee, J., Oh, S., Dong, H., Wang, F., & Burnett, G. (2019). Motivations for self-archiving on an academic social networking site: A study on ResearchGate. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 70 (6), 563–574.

Lepori, B., Thelwall, M., & Hoorani, B. H. (2018). Which US and European higher education institutions are visible in ResearchGate and what affects their RG score? Journal of Informetrics, 12 (3), 806–818.

Lopez-Cozar, E. D., & Cabezas-Clavijo, A. (2013). Ranking journals: Could Google scholar metrics be an alternative to journal citation reports and Scimago journal rank? Learned Publishing, 26 (2), 101–114.

Marina, T., & Sterligov, I. (2021). Prevalence of potentially predatory publishing in scopus on the country level. Scientometrics, 126 , 5019–5077.

Martín-Martín, A., Costas, R., van Leeuwen, T., & López-Cózar, E. D. (2018). Evidence of open access of scientific publications in Google Scholar: A large-scale analysis. Journal of Informetrics, 12 (3), 819–841.

Martin-Martin, A., Orduña-Malea, E., Harzing, A. W., & López-Cózar, E. D. (2017). Can we use Google Scholar to identify highly-cited documents? Journal of Informetrics, 11 (1), 152–163.

Martín-Martín, A., Orduña-Malea, E., & López-Cózar, E. D. (2018). Author-level metrics in the new academic profile platforms: The online behaviour of the Bibliometrics community. Journal of Informetrics, 12 (2), 494–509.

Martín-Martín, A., Orduna-Malea, E., Thelwall, M., & López-Cózar, E. D. (2018). Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus: A systematic comparison of citations in 252 subject categories. Journal of Informetrics, 12 (4), 1160–1177.

Mason, S., & Sakurai, Y. (2020). A ResearchGate-way to an international academic community? Scientometrics, 126 , 1149–1171.

Mayr, P., & Walter, A. K. (2007). An exploratory study of Google Scholar. Online Information Review, 31 (6), 814–830.

Meier, A., & Tunger, D. (2018). Survey on opinions and usage patterns for the ResearchGate platform. PLoS ONE, 13 (10), e0204945.

Memon, A. R. (2016). ResearchGate is no longer reliable: Leniency towards ghost journals may decrease its impact on the scientific community. The Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association, 66 (12), 1643–1647.

Murray, M. (2014). Analysis of a scholarly social networking site: The case of the dormant user. SAIS 2014 Proceedings , 1.

Muscanell, N., & Utz, S. (2017). Social networking for scientists: An analysis on how and why academics use ResearchGate. Online Information Review, 41 (5), 744–759. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-07-2016-0185

Nicholas, D., Clark, D., & Herman, E. (2016). ResearchGate: Reputation uncovered. Learned Publishing, 29 (3), 173–182.

Norris, M., Oppenheim, C., & Rowland, F. (2008). Finding open access articles using google, google scholar, oaister and opendoar. Online Information Review, 32 (6), 709–715.

Orduna-Malea, E., & Delgado López-Cózar, E. (2017). Performance behavior patterns in Author-level metrics: A disciplinary comparison of Google Scholar Citations, ResearchGate, and ImpactStory. Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics, 2 , 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2017.00014

Orduña-Malea, E., & López-Cózar, E. D. (2014). Google Scholar Metrics evolution: An analysis according to languages. Scientometrics, 98 (3), 2353–2367.

Orduña-Malea, E., & López-Cózar, E. D. (2015). The dark side of Open Access in Google and Google Scholar: The case of Latin-American repositories. Scientometrics, 102 (1), 829–846.

Orduna-Malea, E., Martin-Martin, A., Thelwall, M., & Delgado Lopez-Cozar, E. (2017). Do ResearchGate Scores create ghost academic reputations? Scientometrics, 112 , 443–460. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2396-9

Ortega, J. L. (2017). Toward a homogenization of academic social sites: A longitudinal study of profiles in Academia.edu, Google Scholar Citations and ResearchGate. Online Information Review, 41 (6), 812–825. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-01-2016-0012

Shamseer, L., Moher, D., Maduekwe, O., et al. (2017). Potential predatory and legitimate biomedical journals: Can you tell the difference? A cross-sectional comparison. BMC Medicine, 15 (1), 15–28.

Shrivastava, R., & Mahajan, P. (2015). Relationship amongst ResearchGate altmetric indicators and Scopus bibliometric indicators: The case of Panjab University Chandigarh (India). New Library World, 116 (9/10), 564–577. https://doi.org/10.1108/NLW-03-2015-0017

Shrivastava, R., & Mahajan, P. (2017). An altmetric analysis of ResearchGate profiles of physics researchers: A study of University of Delhi (India). Performance Measurement and Metrics, 18 (1), 52–66. https://doi.org/10.1108/PMM-07-2016-0033

Singh, V.K., Srichandan, S.S. & Lathabai, H.L. (2021). ResearchGate and Google Scholar: How much do they differ in publications, citations and different metrics and why? Pre-print. Available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.13602

Thelwall, M., & Kousha, K. (2015). ResearchGate: Disseminating, communicating, and measuring Scholarship? Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66 (5), 876–889. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23236

Thelwall, M., & Kousha, K. (2017a). ResearchGate articles: Age, discipline, audience size, and impact. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 68 (2), 468–479. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23675

Thelwall, M., & Kousha, K. (2017b). ResearchGate versus Google Scholar: Which finds more early citations? Scientometrics, 112 (2), 1125–1131. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2400-4

Tol, R. S. (2008). A rational, successive g-index applied to economics departments in Ireland. Journal of Informetrics, 2 (2), 149–155.

Tol, R. (2009). The h-index and its alternatives: An application to the 100 most prolific economists? Scientometrics, 80 (2), 317–324.

Van Noorden, R. (2014). Online collaboration: Scientists and the social network. Nature News, 512 (7513), 126.

Van Noorden, R. (2017). Publishers threaten to remove millions of papers from ResearchGate. Nature News . https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2017.22793

Walters, W. H. (2007). Google Scholar coverage of a multidisciplinary field. Information Processing &amp; Management, 43 (4), 1121–1132.

Article   MathSciNet   Google Scholar  

Yan, W., & Zhang, Y. (2018). Research universities on the ResearchGate social networking site: An examination of institutional differences, research activity level, and social networks formed. Journal of Informetrics, 12 , 385–400. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2017.08.002

Yan, W., Zhang, Y., Hu, T., & Kudva, S. (2021). How does scholarly use of academic social networking sites differ by academic discipline? A case study using ResearchGate. Information Processing &amp; Management, 58 (1), 102430.

Yu, M. C., Wu, Y. C. J., Alhalabi, W., Kao, H. Y., & Wu, W. H. (2016). ResearchGate: An effective altmetric indicator for active researchers? Computers in Human Behaviour, 55 , 1001–1006. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.11.007

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work is partly supported by the extramural research grant no: MTR/2020/000625 from Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), India, to the first author. The authors would also like to acknowledge that a pre-print version of this article is available on arXiv at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.13602 (Singh, Srichandan & Lathabai, 2021 ).

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Computer Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, 221005, India

Vivek Kumar Singh, Satya Swarup Srichandan & Hiran H. Lathabai

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vivek Kumar Singh .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Singh, V.K., Srichandan, S.S. & Lathabai, H.H. ResearchGate and Google Scholar: how much do they differ in publications, citations and different metrics and why?. Scientometrics 127 , 1515–1542 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04264-2

Download citation

Received : 28 May 2021

Accepted : 03 January 2022

Published : 27 January 2022

Issue Date : March 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04264-2

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Academic social networks
• Bibliographic data sources
• Google Scholar
• ResearchGate
• Scholarly databases
• Scientometrics
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

Citation Analysis: Tools for finding who's citing you and calculating journal impact

• Part 1: Citation Analysis Tools
• Part 2: Metric Impact Tools
• Part 3: Predatory Publishing
• Part 4: Journal Verification Resources

What is ResearchGate and is it RELIABLE?

In the last few years, I have received several questions about ResearchGate , the social network site for academics.  Launched in 2008, their stated aim was to help researchers communicate quickly via their platform, making it easy to share and access scientific and scholarly knowledge and or expertise.  It’s free to join and each member is given a “profile page” whereby they can give a brief biographical snapshot and list their publications.  Just seven years later, ResearchGate has a noteworthy reach with  more than 3,000 scientists polled by Nature reporting they were “aware” of ResearchGate and just under half said they “visited ResearchGate regularly” (Van Noorden 2014).   On first glance, it might seem that ResearchGate has a wide coverage of articles from different disciplines and years but its coverage of recent years is far more substantial and some disciplines such as the arts and humanities as well as some areas of social sciences receive sparse coverage (Thelwall and Kousha 2015).   So as an academic social network, most reviewers have no qualms with ResearchGate per se.  The problems scholars have is with the ResearchGate SCORE as a measure of a researcher’s scientific reputation .   Questions that came to mind when taking a closer look at ResearchGate were: 1) How do they get that score? 2)Why isn’t their method transparent? 3)How do we know that their viewing figures are not artificially inflated?  These were the questions I set out to answer as I approached this research project.  I thought surely there must be numerous studies taking a critical look at how far and wide ResearchGate strays from well-established bibliometric guidelines for research metrics.  

Luckily, I found quite a few papers that address these very questions and their conclusions were interesting and surprising.  The most surprising thing I found was that no study, to date, has been able to refute or confirm that ResearchGate’s viewing figures are artificially inflated.  So this question continues to taunt.  There was consensus on the fact that ResearchGate’s article views have low to moderate correlations with both Scopus citations and Mendeley readers (Thelwall and Kousha 2014).  Incidentally, Mendeley is Elsevier’s answer to a social citation manager that helps author’s keep track of their citations and like ResearchGate and Academia.edu it has a social component.  Some studies concluded that if the article intake and reputation of ResearchGate continues to grow then the correlation factor between ReseachGate metrics and traditional research metrics will also increase as ResearchGate becomes more comprehensive.  Other papers/studies I read gave opposite evidence and found the ResearchGate Score to have serious limitations going so far as to say “the ResearchGate Score should not be considered in the evaluation of academics in its current form (Kraker and Lex 2015).   Of course some scholars argue that the ResearchGate Score is a composite metric taking into account “social interactions” in tandem with traditional research metrics which gives a more “desirable” picture of impact but in the end there is no consensus on how to measure academic influence via social media (Jordan 2015).  

Apart from the papers and studies, I found that scholars either love or hate ResearchGate .  Many scholars find ReseachGate’s frequent use of automated e-mails (that claim to come from colleagues active on the site) a disgraceful tactic that lures people to join on false pretenses.  There have been incidents where profiles on the site have not been created by real people but have been created “automatically and incompletely” by culling details of scholar’s affiliations, publications records, etc. from off the web (Van Noorden 2014).   Others find that every important paper in their field has been easily and quickly accessed via ResearchGate.  In the end, what is a researcher to do who is seeking some kind of empirical yes or no about ResearchGate?  Like everything else, it depends . . .  if you are seeking an alternative or new way to get your work out there that alters the traditional metrics of scholarly communication, ResearchGate might just be the thing.  However, if you are seeking a reliable tool to measure your scholarly output then ResearchGate does not make the grade.  

Corvello,  V.,  Genovese,  A.,  &  Verteramo,  S.  (2014).  Knowledge  sharing among users of scientific social networking platforms.  Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, 261, 369-380.

Delgado López-Cózar, E., Robinson-García, N., Torres-Salinas, D. (2014). The Google Scholar experiment: How to index false papers and manipulate bibliometric indicators. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65 (3), 446-454.

Hoffmann, C. P., Lutz, C. &Meckel, M. (2015).  A relational altmetric? Network centrality on ResearchGate  as  an  indicator  of  scientific  impact.  Journal  of  the  Association  for Information Science and Technology. doi: 10.1002/asi.23423

Jordan, K. (2015). Exploring the ResearchGate score as an academic metric: Reflections and implications  for  practice.  In:  Quantifying  and  Analysing  Scholarly  Communication  on the Web (ASCW15), 30 June2015, Oxford. http://oro.open.ac.uk/43538/1/ASCW15_jordan_response_kraker-lex.pdf

Kadriu,   A.   (2013).   Discovering   value   in   academic   social  networks:   A   case   study   in ResearchGate.  In  Proceedings  of  the  35th International  Conference  on  Information Technology Interfaces (ITI2013) (pp. 57-62). Los Alamitos:IEEE Press.

Kraker,  P.  &  Lex,  E.  (2015).  A  critical  look  at  the  ResearchGate  score  as  a  measure  of scientific   reputation.   In   Proceedings   of   the  Quantifying   and   Analysing   Scholarly Communication on the Webworkshop (ASCW’15), Web Science conference 2015 (Oxford, UK, June 28 –July 1, 2015).

Ortega,  J.  L.  (2015).  Relationship  between  altmetric  and  bibliometric  indicators  across academic social sites: The case of CSIC's members. Journal of Informetrics, 9(1), 39-49.

Thelwall,  M.,  &  Kousha,  K.  (2014).  Academia.edu: Social network  or  academic  network? Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(4), 721-731.

Thelwall,  M.,  &  Kousha,  K.  (2015). ResearchGate: Disseminating, communicating and measuring Scholarship? Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(5), 876-889.

Van  Noorden,  R.  (2014).   Scientists  and  the  social  network.  Nature, 512(7513),  126-129. http://www.nature.com/news/online-collaboration-scientists-and-the-social-network-1.15711.

• << Previous: Part 4: Journal Verification Resources
• Last Updated: Apr 25, 2024 10:55 AM
• URL: https://libguides.pace.edu/citationanalysis

Style and Grammar Guidelines

APA Style provides a foundation for effective scholarly communication because it helps writers present their ideas in a clear, concise, and inclusive manner. When style works best, ideas flow logically, sources are credited appropriately, and papers are organized predictably. People are described using language that affirms their worth and dignity. Authors plan for ethical compliance and report critical details of their research protocol to allow readers to evaluate findings and other researchers to potentially replicate the studies. Tables and figures present information in an engaging, readable manner.

The style and grammar guidelines pages present information about APA Style as described in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition and the Concise Guide to APA Style, Seventh Edition . Any updates to APA Style are noted on the applicable topic pages. If you are still using the sixth edition, helpful resources are available in the sixth edition archive .

Looking for more style?

• Accessibility of APA Style
• Line Spacing
• Order of Pages
• Page Header
• Paragraph Alignment and Indentation
• Sample Papers
• Title Page Setup
• Appropriate Level of Citation
• Basic Principles of Citation
• Classroom or Intranet Sources
• Paraphrasing
• Personal Communications
• Quotations From Research Participants
• Secondary Sources
• Abbreviations
• Capitalization
• Italics and Quotation Marks
• Punctuation
• Spelling and Hyphenation
• General Principles for Reducing Bias
• Historical Context
• Intersectionality
• Participation in Research
• Racial and Ethnic Identity
• Sexual Orientation
• Socioeconomic Status
• Accessible Use of Color in Figures
• Figure Setup
• Sample Figures
• Sample Tables
• Table Setup
• Archival Documents and Collections
• Basic Principles of Reference List Entries
• Database Information in References
• DOIs and URLs
• Elements of Reference List Entries
• Missing Reference Information
• Reference Examples
• References in a Meta-Analysis
• Reference Lists Versus Bibliographies
• Works Included in a Reference List
• Active and Passive Voice
• Anthropomorphism
• First-Person Pronouns
• Logical Comparisons
• Plural Nouns
• Possessive Adjectives
• Possessive Nouns
• Singular “They”
• Adapting a Dissertation or Thesis Into a Journal Article
• Correction Notices
• Cover Letters
• Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS)
• Open Science
• Response to Reviewers