Researchgate promotes scientific networking. How odd to get a "max limitation of the people you follow" and " first delete other people before adding new ones".
Somebody any reactions or feelings regarding this.
Here is the guideline printed by ResearchGate: Are there limits to the number of researchers I can follow?
Once you’re following more than a certain number of researchers, the number of people you can follow is limited. This limit is not fixed, and is related to the number of researchers who follow you. This is for both security and technical reasons. If you have reached this limit and would like to follow more researchers, you’ll have to unfollow some first. Fine-tuning the list of researchers you follow leads to a more tailored Home Feed, filled with content relevant to your interests and field of research.
I suspect this is to discourage following for the sake of increasing your score, rather than networking within the more logical confines of your interests. The point is to have a true network of people you actually interact with over your work,
Here is the guideline printed by ResearchGate: Are there limits to the number of researchers I can follow?
Once you’re following more than a certain number of researchers, the number of people you can follow is limited. This limit is not fixed, and is related to the number of researchers who follow you. This is for both security and technical reasons. If you have reached this limit and would like to follow more researchers, you’ll have to unfollow some first. Fine-tuning the list of researchers you follow leads to a more tailored Home Feed, filled with content relevant to your interests and field of research.
I suspect this is to discourage following for the sake of increasing your score, rather than networking within the more logical confines of your interests. The point is to have a true network of people you actually interact with over your work,
I agree with Sven that this is "odd", particularly because Researchgate does not publish the equation that determines this limit. I unfollowed some 30 researchers already and still are not allowed to follow new people. Hence it seems like the algorithm has changed.
I completely agree. To foster new collaborations across fields, I would like to see these limits lifted as they are a major barrier.
I could underrstand any limitation but If you know about it in anticipation. It is very difficult to any of us, once we see that horrible message, to sort our following list in order to fine tune our network as Hendrika suggest.
I have another complaint about the issue. If Research Gate told you that you can not follow another member and urges you to unfollow first. How could it be possible that if you decide to unfollow 10 or 20 Research Gate members, Reseach Gate still block you to follow new people?
Not even the "follow back" option works... I hope they issue a communication to explain the rules before some researchers start to migrate to other platforms.
Dear Marco,
Thanks for getting in touch. We limit the number of people you can follow to prevent members from spamming other members with systematic followings. This is for both security and technical reasons, and cannot be lifted for an individual researcher. The limit is not fixed, and depends on the number of researchers following you. If you have reached this limit and would like to follow more researchers, you’ll have to unfollow some first.
Editing the list of researchers you follow leads to a more tailored Home Feed filled with content relevant to your interests and field of research.
For more information on how to unfollow researchers, see: https://explore.researchgate.net/display/support/Following+and+Recommending
Kind regards,
Hannah
RG Community Support
arg i hate this answer
Dear Hannah,
your link leads to a dead side: Page not found. and I only find the standard help page. How is it determined how many people I can follow? based on the score?
I wanted to use it to get an overview of what papers are published from other people in my university. Because I am orientated by answering a certain scientifc question and therefore I look for methods and equipment which enables me to do this. I dislike the modern style where science is based on what equipment is available. "we have now that microsope, what can be do with it?" is a bad style in my opinion and leads to a lot of unnecessary and unfocused publications. And this reduces the chance to learn new methods.
maybe you can introduce a feature which places tiny message in the feed, if new technology is used in papers of the own university. Or one could summarize the core facilities which should be there.
all the best,
Oli
I think is just a silly feature of Reasearchgate, because is limiting network exchange, but easly to overcome just make a directory with new folders.
Agree, this is really not acceptable... There are hundreds of prolific researchers in each of the 3-4 areas of interest I work in.... Can this please be lifted?
Its not acceptable to limit someone's network, it's just like defeating the same purpose of creating the platform to bring peers togther in the same direction of research.
This should not be there as it is not an healthy activity, this Will limit the scientific efforts and bias in communication
It does not make any sense to limit someone's network. They should come out with a better solution.
I have a feeling that this limitation precludes following researchers for the sake of increasing your score rather than increasing chances of networking
Answer directly from ResearchGate: https://explore.researchgate.net/display/support/Following+researchers
" Are there limits to the number of researchers I can follow?
The number of researchers you can follow is subject to a limit which is based on the number of researchers who follow you. This is for both security and technical reasons. If you have reached this limit and would like to follow more researchers, you’ll have to unfollow some first. Fine-tuning the list of researchers you follow leads to a more personalized home feed that shows you content relevant to your research interests and field. "
This limit is too low in my opinion. I was hoping to use my ResearchGate "Follows" as a way to construct a graph of the connections between researchers in my particular fields of interest and to get an idea of highly connected people/nodes that I have not yet discovered.
I currently have 57 "followers" and appear to have hit a limit of 315 people that I can follow if anyone wants to use that as a data point in figuring out how this limit is calculated. RG score is currently 17.33.
Well because of both security and technical reasons. I fully agree with kemp response.
I don't support the Din reply where he said Putting limits is not good. It is good sometimes because if you follow the right person of your area then u follow list is sufficient what research gate is providing you the limit.
Its very sad to see that useless facebook has limit of 5000 but usefull RG is limiting me at 200. Very bad
I'm also having this trouble. Can't we ask the researchgate to fix this. This is not fb and people who come here are researchers.
It is wonderful in the 21st century that we have technology, but at the same time it limits us. I mean if you are using FB, there are so many follow(ers) which is somehow nonsense. If RG has not think seriously, it will impact their business as well as their original goal to be establishment for connecting researchers at one platform. As per some friends discussed that the restrictions due to increase of score, then they can change their algorithms and have no or minimal points for follow(ers). This is not a big task in the current AI world. The rest is in the hands of RG governing body. ...
We need to change this. Has anyone contacted RG about having limitless connections to other researchers? Perhaps we could start a petition to show how many of us disagree with their policy of limitation?!?
There seems to be a little bug in the UI: I'm at my limit, but when I click on "Follow" I get the confirmation "You are now following this researcher" (green box), but it actually did not work. When I try this in Safari under iOS, I get "you've reached your limit" (red box).
I have over 120 co-authors, and have hit my RG limit quite quickly by looking a bit into the neighbourhood. Penalised for my research being setup to broadly? I'd love some more leniency :)
Brief follow-up: I'm currently unable to follow some of my new co-authors (articles published since early 2019), because I have reached my researchgate limit :(
I find it really odd that I get a feedback on co-authors that I am not interested to follow while I have this limitation on who I really want to follow!
I am more interested in knowing about the rationale behind limiting the number of followers.
It is a bit weird (and random number 267) ~ it is not like we can choose how many interesting researchers we need to follow...
Has someone tried to contact RG about this? It's pretty annoying, i like to peruse RG daily and read about new research, but I only get a couple new things per day. It would be nice to get more by following more people. Also I'm interested in lots of different research outside what I immediately do, and the community i belong to (stable isotopes) is very large and diverse in terms of subject matter. I suspect they won't change anything, but we can always hope! Maybe they can make some sort of other feature to follow people without actually "following" them.
RG should publish limit equation and following limitation should be revised.
I'm also facing that problem. To follow new researcher, I need to delete one researcher from my list. Is there any solution for that?
That's very interesting to know and upon reading the discussion insights, I do agree on the arguments of Sven Van Poucke Hendrika Vande Kemp, Hauke Gravenkamp, and others. If ever, RG should be unlimited.
Thank you, Sir Sven Van Poucke and kind regards.
I followed a certain amount of people and now I am unable to follow even if I unfollow. This is odd and I find this a little sad.
It's an annoying feature of the RG network. RG team can look into the matter.
Hi ! On researchgate there is a maximum number of people you can follow and it depends on the number of ones followers. From experience, I have found the ratio between following to followers to be 4.2. This means if you have 5 followers; you can follow 21 people at max. Although there must be other parameters depending on the number of followers, beyond which the algorithm is different.
Hi! On research gate, there is a maximum number of people you can follow and it depends on the number of followers (please see the research gate support link):
https://explore.researchgate.net/display/support/Following+researchers under the heading of “Are there limits to the number of researchers I can follow?”. Some statistical formula to know limits on the following can be found below:
If your followers are ≥100, you can use the equation (which is in 7% error range):
Following Limit = 2.1886 * number of followers + 100
However, if followers are < 100, you can use the equation (which is in a 36% error range from 0-50 followers, and 8% error range for 50-99 followers):
Following Limit = 3.9176 * number of followers + 40
Very good question, I could not follow experts in my field, anyone found the way how to fix it pls? Thanks
Very good question. I can't follow more than 287 researchers and I think this is sad.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Medicine
- Counseling Psychology