I think the questions are fairly straightforward, so I won't add too much, but a social network is only useful if a lot of people use it, and while there's certainly activity on RG, it seems to be fairly limited. Admittedly, the academic community is much smaller than the community as a whole, but I still think RG could be a larger social network.
I'm active researcher and involved in several research projects including Industry projects, consultancy, academic projects and doctoral work. I recommend all my students, colleagues, research scholars and Industry partners to have active account on RG. They can refer to our research work here and even, connect to other fellow researchers easily and effectively. And most of them are following RG for their research work. ☺️
I think we can mention people who are experts in their fields to start a discussion
I have spent much of the last 20 years studying collaborative communities on the Internet. I started using ResearchGate as just another review of yet another group trying to work together on the web. My criticism is that RG founders need to be actively involved, and to set research directions. Yes, random connections work for generating small changes, but from the point of view of society, they are mostly random, and generally cancel out. A lot of activity with little benefit to society.
As for your question, each topic has a much larger community on the general web. A topic or question in RG, with a handful of participants, has many thousands or millions of people in the rest of the world. Those people are actively involved in facets of nearly everything done on RG. You cannot talk to them individually, but there are ways to influence change.
The passive methods of RG generally do not work. Especially when there is no goal or direction.
You are much better advised to get your own domain, organize your topic, invite the people active on that topic. Study them and what they are doing and then do everything you can to catalyze new growth and connections. And, yes, include RG people, as well as people from industry, government, education, nonprofits - everyone who wants to get involved. It is a hard task to document and organize topics for the whole world, the potential is much greater.
Why do you think people build websites, write books, publish journals, and start blogs? Some of it is to make money, but some people just want the world to be better.
Good luck.
I'm not sure I can agree with you there, Richard Collins. My work has received far more attention on RG than it has on my personal sites.
Daniel Goldman,
Your personal sites are not advertised as well as ResearchGate, the expected number of visitors much smaller. But the number of visitors and users of RG is much smaller than the universe of people who "could" understand and contribute to your ideas.
RG could deliberately identify and prioritize ideas and topics inside RG, and index ALL the general web accordingly. Then make efforts to connect RG to all the other groups and people on various topics. Individuals can do this, but a corporate, or group-wide methodology for linking RG to the rest of the world will yield things of value to the owners and users of RG.
This has many possibilities:
- For instance, RG could become the "go to" place for certain topics, allow outsiders to become involved, and press to improve that particular topic efficiency.
- RG could allow RG groups to join international collaborations as an adjunct or primary group. For instance, join a Large Hadron Collider Data Users Group. RG groups could become recognized members of many collaborations, using RG as a private area to work together, but then contributing as a group, or individuals.
- [You could try to identify all the statisticians in RG, and track their involvements worldwide. You could look at the impacts of their approach on the effectiveness of the projects they join.]
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