Anyone else here on Research Gate?
First of all, let me first declare that I'm not on Facebook, don't have a Twitter account, etc.. etc. This blog is my only form of "social media" involvement in physics, if you discount online physics forums. So I'm not that into these social media activities. Still, I've been on Research Gate for several years after being invited into it by a colleague.
If you're not familiar with it, Research Gate is a social media platform for ... you guessed it ... researchers. You reveal as much about yourself as you wish in your profile, and you can list all your papers and upload them. The software also "trolls" the journals and online to find publications that you may have authored and periodically asks you to verify that they are yours. Most of mine that are currently listed were found by the software, so it is pretty good.
Of course, the other aspect of such a social media is that you can "follow" others. The software, like any good social media AI, will suggest people that you might know, such as your coauthors, people from the same institution as yours, or any other situation where your name and that person's name appear in the same situation or document. It also keeps tabs on what the people that follows you or ones that you follow are doing, such as new publications being updated, job change, etc.. etc. It also tells you how many people viewed your profile, how many read your publications, and how many times your publications have been downloaded from the Research Gate site.
Another part of Research Gate is that you can submit a question in a particular field, and if that is a field that you've designated as your area of expertise, it will alert you to it so that you have the option of responding. I think this is the most useful feature of this community because this is what makes it "science specific", rather than just any generic social media program.
I am still unsure of the overall usefulness and value of this thing. So far it has been "nice", but I have yet to see it as being a necessity. Although, I must say, I'm pleasantly surprised to see some prominent names in my field of study who are also on it, which is why I continued to be on it as well.
So, if you are also on it, what do you think of it? Do you think this will eventually evolve into something that almost all researchers will someday need?
Zz.
1 comment:
You probably were not invited to Research Gate by a colleague. Rather, Research Gate sends personalized emails to people with whom you have published, using your name as the sender address. They did this in my case, i.e., without me having an account with them they sent emails to colleagues using my name as the sender's address, asking colleagues to join research gate, which I only found out about afterwards. I still get about 5-10 such "invitations" per week.
Given that they are the biggest spammer in science, I avoid them at all cost.
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