Research Article: “Survey on Opinions and Usage Patterns for the ResearchGate Platform”
The following article was recently published online by PLoS One.
Title
Survey on Opinions and Usage Patterns for the ResearchGate Platform
Authors
Andreas Meier
Central Library, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany
Dirk Tunger
Central Library, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany
Source
PLoS ONE
13(10): e0204945
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0204945
Abstract
Based on a survey, the following study investigates opinions and also usage patterns relating to the ResearchGate social networking site for scientists and researchers. The survey consisted of 19 questions and was conducted online with 695 scientists from the disciplines of physics, biology, medicine, and neuroscience. Amongst other issues, the research questions concerned how much time and effort the interviewees expended on ResearchGate, what added value they perceived in using the site, the extent to which social aspects influence use, how participants planned to use the platform in future, and what role ResearchGate’s own metric, the RG score, played for the scientists. In addition, we discuss which of the factors of age, sex, origin, and scientific discipline have a decisive influence on the responses of the interviewees and which are of no statistical significance The results clearly show that the origin of the participants is frequently decisive, but that the remaining factors also have a considerable influence on the responses for more than 25% of the questions.
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About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.