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Understanding Academia.edu and ResearchGate

← go back to the impact challenge table of contents.

We’ll be honest – we thought long and hard about including this chapter and its activities in the OU Impact Challenge. Academia.edu and ResearchGate both seem attractive to scholars, but they also have their share of disadvantages and downsides.    Ultimately, we decided to include this information, because so many of you at OU have accounts on these two sites. A quick search turns up 3,849 OU-affiliated users on Academia.edu and 4,731 on ResearchGate! But instead of diving right into the “how tos,” we think it’s especially important to place these two sites into context and preface them with important considerations.

Consideration #1: You Are Not the Customer

Consideration #2: You Might Be Breaking the Law

Another consideration with these particular services is the legality of uploading your work there. Most publishers require authors to sign a publication agreement/copyright transfer prior to a manuscript being published which outlines what you can/cannot do with your own work in the future (we will cover this in Chapter 11 of the OU Impact Challenge). Uploading your work – especially a publisher’s pdf – to a site such as Academia.edu or ResearchGate may be a violation of the terms of the publishing agreement, whereas uploading it to an institutional repository may not be (or can be negotiated not to be). Several years ago, a major academic publisher actively went after Academia.edu, requiring them to take down all of the publisher’s content that had been illegally uploaded, much to the surprise and dismay of these authors. And Academia.edu is not the only target . Earlier this year ResearchGate was set to take down nearly 7 million articles or about 40% of their content.

Consideration #3: Understand the Privacy Implications

Finally, some of these sites’ tactics are troubling from the standpoint of privacy and intellectual freedom. Personally and professionally, many find it distressing that a private company, which doesn’t adhere to the same professional ethics as librarians and other scholars do, collects information about who is reading what. Academia.edu, in particular, then offers to share that information with you if you subscribe to their “premium service.” And while their analytics dashboard doesn’t reveal readers’ names, it may provide enough information for you to know exactly who read your work.    You may decide not to pay for Academia.edu’s premium service, but even so – what you view and download will still be tracked. This may not be troubling to you (the “I’m not doing anything wrong, so I don’t care” argument), but we think it sets a bad precedent. What about tracking researchers who study terrorism? Or whistleblowing? Or even climate change? How might people at these academic social media companies create profiles and make judgments about you based on what you are reading? And what will they do with the information they collect, especially if asked for it by government entities?    We’ve posted some additional reading and resources below. And we will continue to cover some of these topics in the future, since they are highly relevant to sharing scholarly work. If you’re still interested in Academia.edu and/or ResearchGate after reading these articles, we’ve gone ahead and included those activities further down below. We’ve purposefully kept these activities brief, at least for now.     

• A Social Networking Site is Not an Open Access Repository , by Katie Fortney and Justin Gonder
• I Have a Lot of Questions: RG, ELS, SN, STM, and CRS , by Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
• Dear Scholars, Delete Your Account At Academia.Edu , by Sarah Bond
• Academia, Not Edu , by Kathleen Fitzpatrick
• Reading, Privacy, and Scholarly Networks , by Kathleen Fitzpatrick
• Upon Leaving Academia.edu , by G. Geltner
• Should You #DeleteAcademiaEdu , by Paolo Mangiafico
• Should This Be the Last Thing You Read on Academia.edu? , by Gary Hall (downloads as a .pdf)

Make Profiles on Academia.edu and ResearchGate

You know all those things you wish your CV was smart enough to do – embed your papers, automatically give you readership statistics, and so on? Academia.edu and ResearchGate are two academic social networks that allow you to do these things and then some.    They’re also places where your some of your colleagues are spending their time. Actively participating on one or both networks may give you an opportunity to have greater reach with other researchers. And getting your publications and presentations onto these sites legally will make it easier for others to encounter your work. They do this not only through the social network they help you build, but also by improving the search engine optimization (SEO) of your research, making you much more “Googleable.”    Both platforms allow you to do the following:     

• Create a profile that summarizes your research
• Upload your publications, so others can find them
• Find and follow other researchers, so you can receive automatic updates on their new publications
• Find and read others’ publications
• See platform-specific metrics that indicate the readership and reach you have on those sites

Let’s dig into the basics of setting up profiles and uploading your work on these sites.

Getting Started on Academia.edu

Fill Out Your Profile

Now it’s time to add your OU affiliation and interests to your profile. Adding an OU affiliation will add you to a subdomain of Academia.edu which will allow you to more easily find your colleagues. The site will try to guess your affiliation based on your email address or IP address; make any corrections needed and add your department information and title.    Then, add your research interests. These are also important; they’ll help others find you and your work.

Connect With Others

Now let’s connect with your colleagues who are already on Academia.edu. You can either connect your Facebook account or an email account to Academia.edu, which will search your contacts and suggest connections.    You now have an Academia.edu profile! You can continue to spruce it up by adding more publications, as well as adding a photo of yourself, other research interests and publications, and connecting your Academia profile to the other services we’ve covered like ORCiD , GoogleScholar , Twitter , and LinkedIn . See how this might be coming together?!?

Academia.edu Homework

Now that you have a profile, set aside half an hour to explore two uses of Academia.edu:     

• Exploring “research interests” in order to discover other researchers and publications; and
• Getting more of your most important publications online; and

Make a Profile on ResearchGate

Next, we’ll help you with the other major player in the scholarly social network space, ResearchGate. ResearchGate claims 15 million users, and it will help you connect with many researchers who aren’t on Academia.edu. It can also help you understand your readers through platform-specific metrics, and confirm your status as a helpful expert in your field with their “Q&A” feature.    Given ResearchGate’s similarity to Academia.edu, we won’t rehash the basics of setting up a profile and getting your publications online. Go ahead and sign up, set up your account (remember to add detailed affiliation information and a photo), and add a publication or two.    Got your basic profile up and running? Great! Let’s drill down into those three unique features of ResearchGate.

Find other researchers & publications

• Top co-authors

ResearchGate Score & Stats

Limitations

We’ve covered many of the limitations of Academia.edu and ResearchGate in the first section of this chapter. But there is yet another one. It has been pointed out that Academia.edu and ResearchGate are information silos – you put information and effort into the site, but you can’t easily extract and reuse it later. This is absolutely correct. That’s a big downside of these services and a great reason to make sure you’ve claimed your ORCiD in Chapter 1 .    One solution to this drawback (and the ones mentioned above) is to limit the amount of time you spend adding new content to your profiles on these sites, and instead use them as a kind of “landing page” that can simply help others find you and three or four of your most important publications. Even if you don’t have all your publications on either site, their social networking features may still be useful to make connections and increase readership for your most important work.

ResearchGate Homework

Content for the OU Impact Challenge has been derived from “ The 30-Day Impact Challenge ” by Stacy Konkiel © ImpactStory and used here under a CC BY 4.0 International License.

The Library is closing at 5:45pm tonight, January 28, to allow staff and library users the time to get their cars out of UML parking lots before the parking ban begins at 6pm due to inclement weather. For more information about the parking ban, please go here .

• University of Massachusetts Lowell
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ResearchGate

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

How do I edit my publication’s details?

• Go to the publication’s ResearchGate page
• Click Edit on the toolbar below your publication’s title and abstract
• Make the necessary changes
• Click Save changes.

Quick Links

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

Publications  is one of the most useful features on ResearchGate: whether you are adding your research (Journal articles, conference papers, and more), looking for research in your field, or simply downloading other researcher’s work. This research guide contains some useful tips on about adding or editing publication on ResearchGate. 

Two Ways to Add Publications

1. To add your unpublished work to your profile: 

Step 1:  After you are logged in to ResearchGate, go to your profile  Step 2:  Click on Add unpublished work in the top right-hand corner  Step 3:  Upload the file and enter the title, authors, and a description of your research  Step 4:  Click on Add to profile.

Second way to add a publication:

 Step 1: Once you are logged in to  ResearchGate , go on the top-left corner, and click on publications

Step 2:  Click on Add your publications in the right-hand corner  Step 3:   Upload the file and enter the title, authors, and a description of your research  Step 4:  Click on Add to profile.

Category of research

• Journal Articles
• Conference Papers
• All other Research

Another way to add your journal articles to your profile is by searching it on the ResearchGate database:

Step 1: On your profile page, click on Add your publications in the top right-hand corner

Step 2:  Select Journal articles 

Step 3:  Select Author match to be shown any author profiles matching your name

Step 4:  Confirm authorship of your research by clicking Yes next to anything you authored

Step 5:  Click Save to add your publications to your profile.

You can also add your own journal articles if you can‘t find on the ResearchGate database:

Step 3: Enter the title of the journal article you want to add to your profile

Step 4: Upload a full-text version of your article (optional)

Step 5: Click Continue

Step 6: Enter applicable details such as the authors, journal name, and publication date

Step 7: Click Finish to add your article to your profile.

To add research you presented at a conference to your profile:

Step 1: On your profile, click on add your publications in the top right-hand corner

Step 2:  Select Conference papers in the box that appears

Step 3 : Click Select file to find and upload your research (optional)

Step 4:  Enter the title of your research and click Continue

Step 5:  Enter details such as the authors and the conference name and date

Step 6: Click Finish to add your research to your profile.

To add other types of research to your profile (book, thesis, chapter, and more):

Step 1: Go to your profile, and click on add your publications in the top right-hand corner

Step 2:  Select all other research in the box that appears

Step 3: Select the type of research you are adding 

Step 4: Click Select file to find and upload your research (optional)

Step 5:  Enter the title of your research and click Continue

Step 6:  Enter any applicable details about your research

Step 7: Click Finish to add your research to your profile.

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• Last Updated: Oct 31, 2022 1:50 PM
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AIP Publishing and ResearchGate announce new Journal Home partnership for their open access journals

Partnership will boost visibility and reach for seven journals, including three recently launched.

Berlin (Germany) December 12, 2023 — ResearchGate, the professional network for researchers, and AIP Publishing, the publishing division of the American Institute of Physics (AIP), today announced AIP Publishing’s core group of open access journals will benefit from an enhanced presence on ResearchGate through the network’s Journal Home offering. The agreement covers seven journals, including three new launches: APL Energy, APL Machine Learning, and APL Quantum (which will publish its first content in 2024).

AIP Publishing’s mission is to advance, promote, and serve the physical sciences for the benefit of humanity by empowering researchers and breaking down barriers to open, equitable research communication. The new agreement with ResearchGate widens the visibility and readership for their open access journals, with all version-of-record content from these titles available on ResearchGate immediately on publication, as well as backlist content amounting to approximately 17,500 articles.

Authors of the articles included in this partnership will benefit from having their content automatically added to their profiles on ResearchGate. This helps highlight the impact of their work, including who is reading and citing their research — providing authors with a unique opportunity to connect with their readers.

Dedicated Journal Home profiles will be activated throughout the ResearchGate platform, with each journal prominently represented on all associated article pages and other relevant touch points throughout the platform. Through the journal profiles, authors will have a central location for each journal where they can learn more about the journal, discover new relevant article content, and understand how, through their network, they are connected to the journal’s community of authors and editors.

“We couldn’t be happier to see AIP Publishing embark on this new partnership with ResearchGate,” said Sören Hofmayer, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at ResearchGate. “There is growing evidence that journals benefit from the increased brand visibility that our researcher-centric community provides to some 25 million active users. AIP Publishing will now be able to identify who is engaging with their journals and grow those readers into high potential authors.”

“We are delighted to begin this new partnership with ResearchGate, which offers a new way for researchers to find relevant publications by extending the reach and visibility of our open access journals,” added Penelope Lewis, Chief Publishing Officer at AIP Publishing. “We’re especially looking forward to how ResearchGate can support our newest journals in fostering an engaged reader and author community.”

For more information about ResearchGate, please visit www.researchgate.net .

For more information about AIP Publishing, please visit https://publishing.aip.org/

About ResearchGate

ResearchGate is the professional network for researchers. Over 25 million researchers use researchgate.net to share and discover research, build their networks, and advance their careers. Based in Berlin, ResearchGate was founded in 2008. Its mission is to connect the world of science and make research open to all.

About AIP Publishing

AIP Publishing’s mission is to advance, promote, and serve the physical sciences for the benefit of humanity by breaking barriers to open, equitable research communication and empowering researchers to accelerate global progress. AIP Publishing is a wholly owned not-for-profit subsidiary of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and supports the charitable, scientific, and educational purposes of AIP through scholarly publishing activities on its behalf and on behalf of its publishing partners.

Publishing Perspectives

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Academic Publishing: Berlin’s ResearchGate Expands Sage’s Journals

In News by Porter Anderson January 19, 2024 1 Comment

The broadened offer of Sage journals on Germany’s ResearchGate ‘Journal Home’ is to number 100 open-access titles.

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

‘Enhanced Branding’

Sage Publishing is based in Thousand Oaks, California, and since 1965 when it was founded by Sara Miller McCune , has grown to produce more than 1,000 journals annually, historically with an emphasis on the social sciences and including everything from the International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems to Behavioral Science & Policy .

Participating journals’ content will be uploaded automatically to R esearchGate and is expected to be enhanced by elements of the ResearchGate Journal Home , which also has among its participating publishers Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, Karger, Frontiers, IOP Publishing, De Gruyter, Thieme, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and more.

Benefits of the Journal Home portal and its process are said—in ResearchGate’s media messaging—to include journal profiles, journal communities, and “enhanced branding across the platform.”

Associated article pages and other key points of interaction with ResearchGate members are reported to “prominently feature” the journals’ branding and links to researcher profiles.

All of this, of course in an effort to get more views, more hits, more attention, more visibility, for these journals so that they in turn get more input from key researchers whose content then draws eyeballs—the essential virtuous symbiotic circle of academic publishing’s journal distribution hives, the currency of the open-access realm.

Makoff: ‘Specialist Author Support’

As research-authors provide more content, they can expect to see their articles being automatically uploaded to their ResearchGate profiles. That kind of metadata of course is meant to provide researchers with better metrics on their work’s impact and journals with more thorough outreach to readers.

In a prepared statement, Jane Makoff, Sage’s vice-president of marketing, is quoted, saying that the expansion of readership and accessibility for more Sage journals means that “ ResearchGate users will receive access to … Sage content across a diverse range of disciplines from nursing to neurology, all of which has been published using our … peer review process.

“We also look forward to welcoming new authors to the Sage community through this partnership, and introducing them to the specialist author support we offer.”

And Sören Hofmayer, chief strategy officer at ResearchGate, says that Sage’s being an independent scholarly publisher means that its “genuine appetite to increase the accessibility of research for real world impact reflects  ResearchGate ’s mission to connect researchers, open up research, and make a better world for all.

“I look forward to seeing this partnership continue to go from strength to strength.”

ResearchGate’s self-promotional media messaging says that more than 25 million researchers are using the site “to share and discover research, build their networks, and advance their careers.”

ResearchGate’s figures indicate that it draws as many as 49 million unique users are served as many as 342 million page views monthly, the exchange representing 193 countries.

More from Publishing Perspectives on academic and research publishing is here , more on open access is here , and more on scholarly journals is here .

About the Author

Porter anderson.

Porter Anderson has been named International Trade Press Journalist of the Year in London Book Fair's International Excellence Awards. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives. He formerly was Associate Editor for The FutureBook at London's The Bookseller. Anderson was for more than a decade a senior producer and anchor with CNN.com, CNN International, and CNN USA. As an arts critic (Fellow, National Critics Institute), he was with The Village Voice, the Dallas Times Herald, and the Tampa Tribune, now the Tampa Bay Times. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman.

I wish to publish more with sage journals

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