Many researchers love this forum for interaction on their research issues. However, enhancement is a continuous and never-ending process. We, the users, may provide useful feedback that can make Researchgate an even more attractive and sought-after forum for scholarly discussion. What would be your ideas/suggestions to do that from an user's perspective? Here are three things that I would like to suggest:
1. Ability to fetch correct number of citations, including from google scholar. Although RG accepts the fact that number of citations is not exhaustive, yet we may expect that the cross-checking with google scholar and reporting proper citations may increase its usability.
2. Probably you can find hundreds of questions and answers on the issue of "down-vote" in RG already. So suggesting anything about it might be redundant at this point. However, why don't we just look at the social media expert Facebook and how it handled the "dislike" button requests from users. Finally, it did not have one, rather they are thinking about "empathy" button. How about something similar where you put your disagreement with scholarly opinion, and not simply down-voting?
3. How about a "switchable" ticker that you can see real-time whenever a new question is asked or answers are added? By the term "switchable", I mean you can turn it on or off at will, and you might also be able to filter the running ticker notifications either based on your area of expertise or for all questions. (I suspect that tickers would be annoying for some users, therefore, it could stay optional. Yet important updates can be seen if someone wants it real time and switch it on).
Do RG has an android app already? Because the one available in the web does not seem to be functional. Did anybody face the same problem?
Any other idea?
Dear Rahman,
Few questions have already been asked on such issue.
RG is streamlined from time to time and upgraded. Yes, still there is scope for improvement.
Option may be introduced for selecting questions/answers from specific field.
Another, there may be a limit of answers by a RG member to a specific question. Otherwise repetition will go on.
Thanks!
Dear Rahman,
Few questions have already been asked on such issue.
RG is streamlined from time to time and upgraded. Yes, still there is scope for improvement.
Option may be introduced for selecting questions/answers from specific field.
Another, there may be a limit of answers by a RG member to a specific question. Otherwise repetition will go on.
Thanks!
Mr. Kundu, thanks for your answer. Yes, repetition can be avoided, as I already indicated the problem at point 2. What I think is that RG has a way of showing more recent questions than the old ones, which is fine (and actually needed). From your answer, it appears that RG can devise a way so that whenever someone puts a repetitive question, it can quickly cross-check and suggest a list of older questions based on matching percentage. Repetitive questions may be alright only if there is a time interval wide enough to warrant a different perspective and varying answers. Thanks for your contribution.
Hi Khandoker,
1) Agreed with your point1 - hope RG have the analytics to automatically crawl through the webs inclusive Google Scholar Citation to update our citation in RG - currently finding my citation in RG different / outdated from other websites like Google Scholar Citation.
2) Include big data analytics to mine, process & provide summarized insight on a discussion topic with many threads of posts - this will speed up learning.
3) Based on many Q&A contributions from RG scholars & researchers - get some qualified authors / editors to review & compose into various categories of knowledge artifacts for explicit knowledge sharing / future reference (whoever authors / editors performing these works can have their RG score credited).
4) Have a function to download / backup all my Q&As contributed & articles published to date into a formatted Excel / Word doc.
5) Improvement on the down vote feature so that down voter can share their insight on the rationale they download for knowledge contribution - just down vote without clarification is like telling the community there is a problem but can't articulate the problem nor provide a better solution!
6) Include in RG score calculation for articles that RG members had conducted blind review (not only confined within RG) something like www.publons.com
Regards,
Fung
Dr. Sousa, good observations indeed. Yes, summary of questions and debates would be really helpful to digest tons of information.
Dr. Fung, really great suggestions. Did not know about publons.com, just checked out the website. Really nice. Thanks for all the wonderful ideas.
Khandoker -
Recently I asked fellow RGers if they would like a feature for adding errata and other information to their publications/contributions:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Would_you_use_an_errata_and_addendum_section_if_ResearchGate_provided_one_for_your_uploaded_posted_papers
I passed this on to ResearchGate, but have not heard anything back other than that they received my suggestion.
I think that we need to keep requests to a reasonable level that does not strain ResearchGate resources. I could be wrong, but I seem to have noticed software glitches that currently exist. I just sent the following to ResearchGate using the contact link shown at the bottom here:
"ResearchGate staff: I think I reported this some time ago, but it still appears to be happening. It seems that when I up vote someone's answer to a question, when I come back later, on occasion, my up vote for that person's answer has disappeared. It could be my mistake, but it seems to happen too often for that to be the only reason. In case there is a software problem, please notify your software developer. Thank you very much."
I also have noticed that more than one of my questions, after I have posted them, were listed for a short time under various topics, or perhaps not at all, and then dropped so that I presume they would be very hard to find. I asked the ResearchGate staff, and they said the software did that automatically if they found the questions inappropriate, but I could see no reason whatsoever for that, and there seemed no difference to me between those questions and others that have stayed active. It seems like a ResearchGate software glitch to me.
My point is that - though I could be wrong - it seems to me that ResearchGate is having a difficult time trying to handle what they are doing now, so anything that we may request that represents a substantial additional software burden for them will not be feasible. We might want to keep requests for additional features simple.
I got on ResearchGate in the first place to be able to archive papers for easy use by former colleagues and others, so it has more than fulfilled my expectations, for which I am very grateful. To be able to add unpublished papers, and ask and answer questions, has been a huge bonus for me. We should remember that this service is free for us, and consider the cost of any new features. But I agree with you that such 'wish lists' may be useful, and perhaps a more efficient way to provide feedback to ResearchGate than scattered individual contacts with them. I sent the link to my question above to ResearchGate, using "Feedback" on https://www.researchgate.net/contact
Cheers - Jim
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