Hi Bernadette
Thought I'd responded to this a few days ago but my message mustn't have got through.
Anyway back on February 2013 I wrote a post on "Why I'm Evaluating ResearchGate" - see http://ukwebfocus.com/2013/02/06/why-im-evaluating-researchgate/
Back then according to a Google search the service hosted 2.9 million PDFs - it's now about 7.8 million:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:researchgate.net+filetype%3Apdf
Obviously this isn't saying anything about the quality of the PDFs, but Researchgate does seem to be significant to researchers.
The big bone of contention, as Hugh points out, are the alerts sent out. However, as described on the blog post, these can be disabled. As with many commercial services, the default is to send email messages out about the service - but good service will, from my point of view, although this to be disabled.
My Researchgate profile is available at
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brian_Kelly
and the 14,578 downloads should have helped with the 'impact' of the ideas in the papers and subsequent citations.
Brian Kelly
PS I've just checked the setting page, which contains:
Scheduled invitations
We'll send these researchers an invitation to join your network where possible.
To turn off an invitation, just uncheck the box next to the researcher you no longer wish to invite
I switched this off some time ago; I think researchers can benefit from using Researchgate and can disable such notifications to avoid irritating their co-authors.
-----Original Message-----
From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Hugh Glaser
Sent: 07 September 2015 11:44
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: ResearchGate
Hi,
Well all I know is that it continues to send out invitations on behalf of people to their co-authors, where those people have no knowledge that the invitations are going out.
And there seem to be more of them than there used to be.
So my opinion is not different - still "iffy".
Best
Hugh
On 4 Sep 2015, at 04:34, Bernadette Houghton <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
I know ResearchGate had a rather iffy reputation a few years ago. Taking a look at the site again, it doesn't look to me like things have improved much over the years.
I'd be interested to hear if others have a different opinion.
Bernadette Houghton
Digitisation and Preservation Librarian
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