ResearchGate is a social network for scientists.
The major disciplines represented in ResearchGate are:
You can use ResearchGate to:
Full-text publications you upload to your ResearchGate profile are indexed by Google Scholar.
Before you create a ResearchGate profile or upload any publications you should consider the risks and issues involved, such as security, confidentiality and copyright:
ResearchGate is a commercial platform.
Researchers should be aware of their publishers’ policies on sharing their publications, ie. which version/s can be used and on which platforms they can be uploaded.
Publishers are increasingly vigilant about infringement of their copyright on these platforms. See, for example, the website of the publisher’s Coalition for Responsible Sharing:
Coalition for Responsible Sharing
Coalition for Responsible Sharing: Status Report on ResearchGate
ARC and NHMRC advise against the use of platforms such as ResearchGate in the specific context of researchers meeting their OA policy compliance requirements, as they lack the necessary commitment the funders seek to long-term preservation, data reuse, publisher copyright requirements and end-user privacy afforded by institutional repositories.
The University of Melbourne has an institutional repository – Minerva-Access – which takes care to observe publisher sharing policies and which, in terms of discovery via Google and Google Scholar, compares favourably with RG and Academia.edu
You should also customise your email notification settings, as with the default settings you may receive many email notifications.