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Research Interest: another undisclosed (and redundant) algorithm by ResearchGate

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  • Sergio Copiello

    (IUAV University of Venice)

Abstract

The scholarly social network ResearchGate (RG) started promoting a new composite indicator: Research Interest. That score is built upon a weighting scheme of citations, recommendations, full-text reads, and other reads by RG members. Here I show that the indicator suffers from, at least, two significant issues, which undermine its utility as an alternative metric. Lack of transparency is the former since there are clues that its underlying algorithm is more complex than what is known according to the information conveyed by RG. Redundancy is another issue because the score is essentially driven by the number of citations and seems to bring negligible additional knowledge in the altmetrics landscape.

Suggested Citation

  • Sergio Copiello, 2019. "Research Interest: another undisclosed (and redundant) algorithm by ResearchGate," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(1), pages 351-360, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:120:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-019-03124-w
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-019-03124-w
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Shannon Mason, 2020. "Adoption and usage of Academic Social Networks: a Japan case study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(3), pages 1751-1767, March.
    2. Sergio Copiello, 2020. "Other than detecting impact in advance, alternative metrics could act as early warning signs of retractions: tentative findings of a study into the papers retracted by PLoS ONE," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2449-2469, December.
    3. Sergio Copiello, 2020. "Multi-criteria altmetric scores are likely to be redundant with respect to a subset of the underlying information," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 819-824, July.
    4. Shannon Mason & Yusuke Sakurai, 2021. "A ResearchGate-way to an international academic community?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(2), pages 1149-1171, February.
    5. Łukasz Wiechetek & Zbigniew Pastuszak, 2022. "Academic social networks metrics: an effective indicator for university performance?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(3), pages 1381-1401, March.
    6. Vivek Kumar Singh & Satya Swarup Srichandan & Hiran H. Lathabai, 2022. "ResearchGate and Google Scholar: how much do they differ in publications, citations and different metrics and why?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(3), pages 1515-1542, March.

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