Scholarly Reputation Building: How does ResearchGate Fare?

Abstract

Article history: Received 17 March 2016 Revised 23 April 2016 Accepted 26 April 2016 Employing a newly developed conceptual framework of the tasks and activities that comprise today’s digital scholarly undertaking and their potentially reputation building, maintaining and enhancing components, the efforts of ResearchGate in supporting scholars’ reputation building endeavours were put under the microscope. Not unexpectedly, RG performs well in regard to basic research activities. Clearly, too, with ten metrics at its disposal, RG is in a league of its own when it comes to monitoring individual research reputation. Where RG falls down is regarding scholarly activities that do not concern pure research and so especially teaching. Its claim to have created a new way of measuring reputation is only partially true because if it wants to do so genuinely then it needs to extend the range of scholarly activities covered. RG also falls short in informing members as to the nature and changes to its service and of embracing new actors, such as citizen scientists and amateur experts.