I've been getting the odd invitation to join ResearchGate ever since my journal article* was published.
My paper is not going to set the world on fire, but more than 5 years after publication, I'm still getting a few pageviews a month and the odd citation. As I mentioned here, the paper hasn't had much of an impact on my post-graduate career, other than the fact that it looks nice on a résumé.
I have no intention of going back to grad school. I also don't have any future papers planned - I do present at the odd conference, but I'm not in a place where I'm advancing the science to the extent that I could get a paper out of it. And my existing paper is already open-access. So would joining an academic network really do much for me or for the general public?
I'm already a piss-poor correspondent and facebook/linkedin updater. I'm not all that interested in committing to yet another social media outlet when I barely use the two that everyone else seems to be on. But maybe I'm just an unsocial crank. Readers, do you use ResearchGate at all, and do you find it useful compared to other networking sites like linkedin?
* as with most academic papers, it wasn't mine alone - I was first/corresponding author, but it was a group effort.
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2 comments:
As an academic, I find ResearchGate more useful than LinkedIn. I can see how it would lack appeal for industry folk, though. The most useful aspect is the number of self-archived publications people post so I don't have to go through paywalls. Sometimes it will recommend relevant papers to read if you've input your field.
The second-most useful aspect is, I think, "following" other researchers you wouldn't typically connect with on LinkedIn. Other than that, though, for me it's just another academic site to periodically update with new publications or updated job information.
Researchgate is an academia network, where you can share not only your published papers, but also your ongoing research (for example, to get some feedback before you publish it), conference abstract, datasets, etc. If you no longer belong to the academia world, I don't think it's worth it. If you need papers on selected topics, you can always look for them in Google Scholar.
Bestvregards
Pedro
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