LifeScientist
15 January 2009
ResearchGATE – the scientific network
Tags: papers, PhD, research, science, semantic search engine, social networking, web2.0Posted in Conferences, PhD life, Research and education, Tips for junior scientists, Tips for senior scientists, Web 2.0, useful software
ResearchGATE works to the benefit of science
Every discovery or invention is based upon previous discoveries or inventions. This is what makes communication so essential for science. ResearchGATE empowers science by connecting the scientific community. Our platform enables researchers to communicate faster, better and easier. This will accelerate the distribution of knowledge – and create new ideas.
ResearchGATE works to the benefit of every scientist
Being connected with co-researchers is a great advantage for every scientist. You can present your profile and your work, manage and extend your professional contacts, join or found groups, ask or answer questions, share or search papers and much more. This collaboration makes everybody’s work much more effective. And it’s free, safe and without spam.
ResearchGATE is designed for the upcoming age of Science 2.0
The tools offered by ResearchGATE are custom-made for researchers. No other platform provides such a wide range of web 2.0 applications exactly matching the needs of the scientific community. New features are constantly added, always state-of-the-art and no-frills. This makes ResearchGATE the best social network choice for scientists.
ResearchGATE comes from scientists to scientists
The people behind ResearchGATE are scientists themselves. They are supported by an advisory board with professors from esteemed universities worldwide. This, and the continuous feedback of users, ensures that ResearchGATE will continue to work to the benefit to the science.
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15 Jan 2009 15:53, Ad Lagendijk
Dear LifeScientist,
I find it difficult to discuss with a pseudonymous contributor. But anyway thank you for your post. I have checked the ResearchGATE site. I am not impressed. The good thing is that the people that join do that – presumably – under their real name. Their introductory video is awfully bad. And I cannot see the added value yet. Their search engine for searching through scientific documents is in no way better than a simple Google search.
The basic problem with all those social scientific sites is that they assume that science would proceed much faster if scientists would collaborate more. If all scientists collaborate rather than compete in the end we will vote on scientific outcomes. As is the practice of the scientific meetings of all the collaborating IPCC scientists.
16 Jan 2009 18:13, Jan
Hi LifeScientist, Hi Ad,
the problem with added value in social networks obviously is the network effect. And in research in particular, sharing is an issue – I believe reseachers want to share, but only with people/colleagues they select…
For those interested in academic research tools and social software, I would also like to point to Mendeley (http://www.mendeley.com, I’m a co-founder). Mendeley Desktop is free academic software for managing and sharing research papers. Mendeley Web is a free research network which lets you access your papers online, discover research trends and connect to like-minded researchers.
The good thing here, as I believe, is that in order to benefit (speaking of “added value”) from Mendeley Desktop, a user does not depend on a large network – the software is of immediate value. However what we try to achieve is to anonymously aggregate usage statistics for articles etc. so that at a later point of time there will be an additional benefit coming from the network (you can see a short presentation about this vision here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzJbrA9EY7A).
Plus, you can create shared groups in Mendeley and select and invite colleagues to share and work on the same documents.
Let me know what you think – either via direct e-mail or via our feedback forum (http://feedback.mendeley.com).
Best wishes
Jan (jan.reichelt@mendeley.com)
20 Jan 2009 12:00, Ad Lagendijk
Jan,
thank you for your comment. My views on social activities stimulated by web 2.0 was described in a previous post .
I think before a digital community can become an influential scientific community it has to incorporate right from the start a system of trust. I just want to be sure that the person who says who he is, he really is. Thawte (freeware) could easily be used for that purpose.
The second thing I want to discuss is shared, simultaneous writing of papers. Scientists are longing for is a scientific equivalent of Sourceforge. Sourceforge is a free (CVS) versioning system. It allows people to work on the same software project with professional version control. Unfortunately it cannot be used for science as Sourceforge requests the whole project to be visible to the whole world. So a more restricted “Sourceforge for scientists” would be a blessing.
So guys, if you want your social scientific site to become leading: incorporate trust and version control. Other advise I will discuss later.