International collaborative research network for scientists

Berlin-based ResearchGate connects academics, medical professionals and developers, making it easy to showcase and share work at any stage.

As with this global HIV research sharing hub and this social networking platform focused solely on data sets, Berlin-based ResearchGate seeks to make new connections possible for researchers around the globe. Free to join, researchers indicate their area of work (academic, corporate or medical researcher) and can then fill in additional details including relevant publications. The site is currently connecting more than 12 million scientists around the world.

Once a user signs up, the site seeks to automatically connect researchers with their publications and provides options to confirm authorship, add additional names used in publication and indicate if a suggestion is incorrect. A live Q&A section can be browsed by topic, making the sharing of methodologies and techniques especially swift. Statistics are available for each publication, letting authors see how useful others are finding their work, and an additional feature is the research-focused jobs board.

So far, approximately 2.5 million publications are being added every month, and the founders point to the ability to share what hasn’t worked as a particularly important and useful aspect of the site. Rather than only publishing successful work, as with most research journals, ResearchGate supports collaboration at all stages of project, which helps prevent the duplication of others’ efforts. What other industries could use a similarly connected collaborative space?