What is ResearchGate?
ResearchGate is an European social network for scientists, researchers and academicians to ask and answer questions, share scientific papers, and find collaborators. The main purpose of this platform is to connect researchers and make it easy for them to share and access scientific output, knowledge and expertise.
ResearchGate's members can also track their publications, store private copies, and make their published or unpublished work publicly available on their platform. In addition, they assess researchers' scientific impact with a metric known as "RG score".
What is the RG score?
ResearchGate assess each member's scientific impact using a metric called "RG score". This metric takes all research activities of their member and turns it into a numeric value, and this value is considered as a source of scientific reputation. The RG is calculated based on the research in their profile, how many post they published, and how other researchers interact with their content.
Why ResearchGate decided to discard the RG Score?
The main reason, that forced the ResearchGate to make a big decision like removing such important score, is that the RG score does not meet some of the most important criteria that should be existed in any metric used to provide an indication of a member’s research impact. According to ResearchGate, the RG score failed to meet some of the following criteria:
Intuitive
Robust
Relevant
Stable
Reproducible
ResearchGate has published in their official website that "At the start of this year, we announced the decision to remove the RG Score after July 2022... We realized we need to adopt a more regular practice of continuous evaluation of our metrics to ensure that they work to support the science community and not harm it."
Resources
ResearchGate. Getting started - Help center
ResearchGate. RG score - Help center
ResearchGate. Why we’re removing the RG Score (and what’s next)
Lantsoght, E. (2021). Using ResearchGate and Academia.edu for Research
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