I'm starting this discussion because I have seen many problems regarding duplications in this website, and it seems like even though it is possible for the RG team to solve these, I believe because of some minor technicalities, these problems are not still solved.
Two of the main problems that I've seen people encountering a lot are:
1) Duplications: This problem is very common and I have seen many questions regarding this. If you have two identical papers in the website, it is promised that RG will automatically merge the duplicate. But in many cases, it does not happen.
Many have problems when two of the uploaded papers already have a separate DOI. I have contacted the RG team regarding this problem, and they've told me that we cannot merge two identical papers when both of them have a DOI. For example, Imagine you upload your preprint, and you also see that the paper is added to RG via Arxiv. In this case, you have to remove one of them, losing reads, recommendations, citations and more..., only because the website is enable of merging two papers with two different DOI.
2) Preprints and papers do not merge. Now this is a very common problem. Again the only answer that RG team provide you with is to delete your preprint.
These problems just make people not upload their preprints in RG. I've seen many people aware of this problem, and just recommending not uploading anything in RG, because it will just create duplicates. I have seen people saying we have so many duplicates in RG that we don't care cleaning it.
And even if they want to clean these duplicates, most of the times the only thing that they can do is to delete one of versions of your paper. Now if you want to remove your uploaded file after a while (Just because it is not gonna merge) why bother uploading it in the first place?
It's a serious problem and I believe RG team should plan something serious on it. Preprints and the published papers should merge, in a single page containing all the informations regarding both in the same place. And two identical papers with different DOI should merge, at least visually, if it is not applicable technically.
That's it. If anyone has any comment, or have any more of these problems and want to add them, or do agree on these fact, please comment your problems here.
I hope RG team try fixing these problems.
Best regards
Dear Mobin:
Yes, I agree with you, the research products in RG could be organized much better than what it is right now. You can suggest this recommendation to the RG webmaster.
I am having similar problems with duplications, e.g. with multi-authored papers if several of the authors upload the article. Automatical merge sometimes does work, even though (in one case) the DOIs are identical. In another case, one paper has a DOI and the other not, but it is not possible to enter the same DOI for the second entry. I cannot delete duplicate entries because they are from other authors (and I do not even know from whom), but can only delete them from my own profile. In this case, however, the duplicate publication stays on the profile of the other authors and I am reminded by ResearchGate again and again to add the publication to my own profile. I have sent requests to ResearchGate repeatedly to merge the duplicate publications, but to no avail and I have not even received a reply. I agree this issue is a nuisance because it causes a lot of confusion and needs to be fixed!
Correction: The second sentence should read: "Automatical merge sometimes does NOT work..."
Thank you very much for your comments.
I don't know why this discussion is not viewed much.
It's again one of those problems that can be included on the list that Researchgate can improve on.There should be a better platform for searching the discussions and questions.
It's very important for us to note the problems, report them and ask for improvement.
Mobin:
Duplicates are not a problem in RG. In my case I have duplicates for some articles written in Spanish, but I have decided to upload the version of the article with title and summary in English to get more visibility and readings of my articles. In RG you can upload from a conference, a technical report, a poster, a book chapter, a summary and even a preprint of an article and there is no problem. After all, one is the one who decides what products you want to leave or remove from this platform.
Dear Luis
You are right. we are capable of removing or adding anything we want. But a very basic and intuitive choice could have been grouping these articles in one place.
For example, you could have added preprint, published version, other version of article in different language, etc. all in one place, with a sharing "reads", citations, etc.
I don't think that's a hard think to ask. And it could help organize RG much better than what it is right now. Do you agree?
Dear Mobin:
Yes, I agree with you, the research products in RG could be organized much better than what it is right now. You can suggest this recommendation to the RG webmaster.
I agree with Martin at the beginning. Even tough you can eliminate duplicates from your profile, if they are still in your coauthor's they come back again, and again.
Also, friends and people try to help by telling you about and article they think are yours 9this is nice, and much appreciated it!), you have to accept the comment to later erase it or merge, which should be done automatically. ... And this happens several times a week! Simply annoying.
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