ResearchGate is a free commercial social networking site for scientists and researchers to share academic articles, ask and answer questions and find researchers and collaborators.
Prof Calitz’ top papers read (Feb 2020 = 118,425 reads) from his set of 177 publications on ResearchGate are related to the use of social media in business school marketing, marketing politics, improving environmental awareness in higher education institutions and social team building for MBA study group cohesion.
Presently there are more than 130+ million publications and 15+ million researchers on ResearchGate. Researchers and anyone interested in academic publications can join for free. Research papers and researchers are searchable on any topic. ResearchGate is a very helpful tool used with other search tools, such as Google Scholar and Ebscohost, says Prof Calitz.
“I would recommend that all academic staff and postgraduate students register on ResearchGate”, he says.
The platform provides researchers with an RG-Index, citations of the researcher’s articles and a weekly statistics report. The report indicates the number of citations and the number of article downloads and articles read by other researchers.
Researchers can also recommend specific papers to other researchers and see who has been reading their research papers. They can also retrieve a weekly or monthly statistical report of all activities relating to their research publications on the platform.
Lately, ResearchGate has included “Jobs you may be interested in” all over the world.
It is important to note that researchers cannot place all articles on ResearchGate. Articles published in specific journals with copyright may not be placed on ResearchGate, only a reference to the original publication may be included.
