Ah.
Thank you for clarifying that.
The example link makes your concerns clear to me.
And I can see why this (people doing multiple deposits) is a good issue to discuss.
Best
Hugh

On 3 Apr 2013, at 15:12, Frederic MERCEUR <[log in to unmask]>
 wrote:

> Hi Hugh,
> 
> as far as I understand, ReseachGate harvests Meta-data via OAI-PMH. So by defaut, they present meta-data and a link to the PDF in the IR which is just fine.
> 
> But as soon as they detect a new PDF file, they will (strongly) suggest to the authors to duplicate the full text on ResearchGate servers. In this case, they will not present anymore the link to the PDF in the IR but they will offer a link to the copy in ResearchGate (see and example : to be honest, they still offer a tiny link to the IR as a second source to get the file).
> 
> With the following link, for example, you get the list of PDF file duplicated from ArXiv :
> 
> http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&as_q=ArXiv&as_sitesearch=researchgate.net&as_filetype=pdf
> 
> I guess you can also get a look at the full text that have been duplicated from your own repository with the following link : 
> 
> http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&as_q=Soton&as_sitesearch=researchgate.net&as_filetype=pdf
> 
> Fred
> 
> Le 03/04/2013 15:38, Hugh Glaser a écrit :
>> Thanks Fred.
>> I had a look at it.
>> It actually looks to me like it is almost doing what they think should be done (they may be wrong!).
>> Although you were able to find a ResearchGate URI for the pdf using Google, that is not what normally appears on their site (and might even be a mistake).
>> 
>> Going to the site, it seems that they have harvested metadata, and added lots of goodness.
>> When you go to a page about a paper, it gives you a link to the pdf, if it has one - but it is actually the pdf on the original IR site.
>> So not too shabby.
>> I suspect that this is not necessarily what the IR owner would like - presumably the IR owner would refer a link to the IR entry that then leads to the pdf.
>> But if you make the pdf link public, then people use it, and indeed it would be strange if ResearchGate didn't link to the pdf (which would make things more painful for the user).
>> Hopefully, the IR software registers each pdf download as a download, and so this site actually is greatly increasing the visibility of the paper, and the statistics are being gathered - this is exactly the IR/OA manifesto!
>> 
>> I may have got it completely wrong - I have no other knowledge about ResearchGate, other than what I can see without signing up.
>> But it is certainly the case that all I see on their site in terms of pdf is links to the IR.
>> It may actually be that what you found through Google is a leaking of their internal caches where they process to add their goodness.
>> 
>> Anyone fancy asking them?
>> 
>> Best
>> Hugh
>> 
>> On 3 Apr 2013, at 13:08, Frederic MERCEUR 
>> <[log in to unmask]>
>> 
>>  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> Hello,
>>> 
>>> For several months, hundreds of full text publications have been duplicated from our Institutional Repository to ResearchGate (
>>> http://www.researchgate.net
>>> ).
>>> 
>>> Most repositories seem affected. If you tag the documents loaded into your repository, you can easily find the documents duplicated from your repository with the following URL (replace the XXXXXXX by the tag value or the name of your university):
>>> 
>>> 
>>> http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&as_q=XXXXXXX&as_sitesearch=researchgate.net&as_filetype=pdf
>>> 
>>> 
>>> It seems that ResearchGate harvests repository through OAI-PMH. Then, when they detect a new full text document, they suggest to authors to duplicate it on ResearchGate servers. To do so, it seems that they have developed very efficient and easy-to-use tools to duplicate the full text files from repositories. Maybe there are also some hidden ways: I have asked a few scientists why they have duplicated the full text from our Repository to ResearchGate. And none of them was aware of having duplicated theirs full text publications.
>>> 
>>> I am worried about this massive duplication because :
>>> - It will become very hard to remove or update a document in case of errors in the documents,
>>> - IR can lose WEB traffic because of ResearchGate (it does not seem the case at the moment). While in the period of financial crisis, the WEB traffic is one of the arguments used to justify the cost of maintenance of our AI with our employers.
>>> - This duplication is not profitable either to the visibility of publications: it would have been preferable to create a backlink to the AI copy rather than duplicate it.
>>> - Each time a new full text is duplicated all co-authors seem to be spammed to join ResearchGate (see : 
>>> http://www.biostars.org/p/63561/
>>> )
>>> - Incidentally some (most?) of these duplications are illegal because of copyright on such material
>>> - …
>>> 
>>> What do you think about ResearchGate full text duplication strategy? Do you think IR should care about them?
>>> 
>>> Kind regards,
>>> Fred
>>> 
>