ResearchGate users now have access to 2,800 articles from Immediate OA and a subset of five years of archival content published in the Journal of Cell Biology (JCB), Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), and Journal of General Physiology (JGP) between May 2016 and April 2021, according to the press release issued 23 November 2021. RUP provides full XML to ResearchGate to quickly and fully index content, leveraging usage of JATS tagging. ResearchGate in turn provides RUP insights on how JCB, JEM, and JGP articles are used within its network, providing a more holistic view of the overall usage and reach of RUP journals. Titles are added automatically and ResearchGate provides usage statistics to authors.
Another syndication agreement, this one with Wiley, began with a pilot in April 2021 where full-text articles from Wiley OA journals were added automatically to ResearchGate. The next phase, where articles from 78 hybrid OA and subscription journals joined the platform, was introduced on 22 November 2021.
In October 2021, ResearchGate and Hindawi, which is owned by Wiley, announced an agreement whereby all articles published in HIndawi’s OA publications available on the ResearchGate platform. That encompasses over 290,000 articles from 230 plus gold OA journals.
This balances the news that ResearchGate removed about 200,000 items at the request of Elsevier and the American Chemical Society (ACS) in September 2021.
ResearchGate can occasionally provide moments of levity to authors. Marcia Bjornerud told the New Scientist’s Feedback column about ResearchGate’s inquiry as to whether James Hutton, who died in 1797, is her co-author. Also in the Feedback column is Fred Riley being asked if he was the author of a paper published in 1932, before he was born.
Personally, I wish ResearchGate would give more choices than “This is Me” or “This is Not Me”. How about, “This is probably me, but the citation is so badly garbled one wonders about the scholarship ability of the author who cited me.” I have an example if ResearchGate is interested in pursuing this.