ask and answer questions, and find collaborators.

Corporate history: ResearchGate was founded in 2008 by a virologist

and computer scientist, Ijad Madisch. It started in Boston, but moved to Berlin, Germany shortly afterwards.

In 2009, the company began a partnership with Seeding Labs, in order to supply third-world

countries with surplus lab equipment from the United States. Its first round of funding

was announced in September 2010. According to The New York Times the website

began with very few features, then developed over time based on input from scientists.

Adoption of the site grew rapidly. From 2009 to 2011, the site grew from 25,000 users to

more than 1 million. The company grew from 12 employees in 2011 to 70 in 2012.

A second round of funding led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund was announced in February 2012.

On June 4, 2013, it closed Series C financing for $35M from investors including Bill Gates.

Features: The New York Times described the site as a

mashup of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It has many of the features that are typical

among social network sites, such as user profiles, messages that can be public or private, and

methods for finding other users with similar interests. It differs from other social networks

in that it is designed for researchers and scientists. Conversation strings focus on

a research interest or paper and you can "follow" a research interest, in addition to following individual users.

It has a blogging feature for users to write short reviews on peer-reviewed articles.

ResearchGate indexes self-published information on user profiles to suggest members

to connect with those that have similar interests. When a user posts a question, it is fielded

to scientists that have identified on their user profile that they have a relevant expertise.

It also has private chat rooms where scientists can share data, edit shared documents, or

discuss confidential topics. As of 2013, it has 2.6 million users.

ResearchGate's largest user-base is in Europe and North America. Most of ResearchGate's users are involved

in medicine or biology, though it also has participants from engineering, computer science

and agricultural sciences among others. Participants can get a higher "score" which ranks their

"scientific reputation" by providing popular answers to questions and other metrics.

Members are encouraged to share raw data and failed experiment results. ResearchGate does

not require peer review or fees. Since accessing documents usually requires an account,

ResearchGate is not considered to be open access. Reception

As of 2009, according to BusinessWeek, ResearchGate was influential in promoting innovation in

developing countries by connecting scientists from those nations with their peers in industrialized

nations. BusinessWeek said the website had become popular largely due to its "navigation"

and "ease of use". It also noted that ResearchGate had been involved in "a string" of notable

cross-country collaborations between scientists that led to substantive developments. A paper

published in the The International Information & Library Review conducted a survey with 160

respondents and found that out of those using social networking "for academic purposes",

Facebook and ResearchGate were the most popular at the University of Delhi, but also "a majority

of respondents said using SNSs [Social Networking Sites] may be a waste of time".

In 2011, a University of Florida librarian conducted an evaluation of ResearchGate.

The librarian answered 211 questions and obtained 293 followers.

According to the Norton Journal of the Medical Library Association, ResearchGate users "provided invaluable feedback" for "evaluating

three existing LibGuides" and the experiment found that librarians can develop real-world

recognition among their peers for their contributions to the site. In a paper published by the Association

for Information Systems an experiment involving a dormant account found that over a 16 month

period, using default settings, ResearchGate sent 297 invitations to 38 people.

These emails are written as if they were personally sent by the user, but they are automatically sent

to co-authors when a user posts an article in their profile unless they opt out.

The user profile was automatically attributed to more than 430 publications. It followed

or was followed by more than 450 users, though the profile was inactive. Journalists and

researchers have found that the "RG score," calculated by ResearchGate via a proprietary

algorithm, can reach high values under questionable circumstances.

ResearchGate has been criticized for emailing unsolicited invitations to the coauthors of

its users as well as for encouraging authors to upload articles to the site, which may

infringe the copyright of the publisher. References

External links Official website