https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_do_you_like_most_about_RG

I would choose this one.

regards

Nice sharing.

To Muhammad Saad Khan:

Many thanks for your sharing and supportive response.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_do_you_like_most_about_RG

I would choose this one.

regards

Also

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_do_you_like_most_about_RG

as well as https://www.researchgate.net/post/A_fatal_flaw_in_the_RG_score_if_you_care

To Jelena B Popović-Djordjević :

Many thanks for your interest in the Question and for your supportive answer.

To Romeo:

Many thanks for your interest in the Question and for your erudite choices.

All of the Questions are pertinent to a critical evaluation of the RG score as an intellectual exercise.

Dear Michael John McAleer :

Thank you for including one of mine in the list of excellent, interesting and challenging Questions.

Regardless of the reasons academics might be attracted to the RG score, it is undoubtedly one of the most topical and popular issues for highly informed and carefully considered discussion on RG.

Dear Michael John and Chia-Lin,

I agree with your previous two assertions. For discussions on all these thirteen questions, it would be useful Scientometrics’ article (2017): “Do ResearchGate Scores create ghost academic reputations?”;

available at https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1705/1705.03339.pdf and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316573798_Do_ResearchGate_Scores_create_ghost_academic_reputations.

Best regards,

Romeo Meštrović

To Romeo:

Many thanks for highlighting the paper to academics on RG.

The published paper tells us nothing that we did not already know, namely that the RG score is not an accurate measure of academic research reputation, and that the RG score can be inflated artificially through Q&A.

The title of the paper is deceptive in that it suggests there are ghost reputations to arise from the RG score, when any serious academic is fully aware that the RG score is a measure of social activity among academics.

Research quality is measured through Citations and the h-index.

What more is there to say?

Dear Romeo:

Thank you for the Scientometrics paper, which seems to go to a lot of technical effort to show what seems to be fairly obvious to regular RG users.

Dear Chia-Lin and Michael John,

Of course!

To Romeo:

Many academics state the obvious in academic publications.

Unimaginative but safe.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_do_you_like_most_about_RG

To Moaid Hussain :

Thank you for indicating a preference for a particular Question regarding the RG score.

The following Question should be added to the list, especially as it might well have been the first to invite discussion about the meaning of the RG score:

2013

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Which_researcher_has_the_highest_RG_score_and_what_does_that_really_mean

Hi Michael John McAleer

I will choose

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_do_you_like_most_about_RG

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Should_the_algorithm_for_the_RG_score_be_made_public

To Eddie-Williams Owiredu :

Many thanks for your helpful and wise choice regarding the RG score.

Please, also see closely related recent RG question

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_the_impact_factor_of_a_publication_taking_into_consideration_in_resaerchgate_points_or_not

(posted 4 days ago).

To Romeo:

Many thanks for the interesting thread.

To state the obvious, the impact factor is not considered for either the RG score or for TRI.

Dear Romeo Meštrović and Michael John McAleer:

It is a constant source of amazement that many academics persist in thinking that the impact factor (of a journal, academic or paper?) might be used in calculating the RG score.

The impact factor and h-index are not even used in calculating TRI, where they would be entirely appropriate.

Dear Chia-Lin and Michael John,

I agree with the previous observations by Chia-Lin (5 hours). However, in my opinion, in order to include the impact factor in calculations of RG score and/or TRI, it should be categorize the all journals (with impact factors) by Scientific Areas and/or their Subareas, and in accordance to this, to “uniformize/modify” their impact factors values (in the expression for caclculation of RG score and/or TRI). For example, as it can been seen at website https://www.bioxbio.com/, the leading journal in Mathematics Annals of Mathematics has (2017/2018) impact factor equal to 4.768 (https://www.bioxbio.com/journal/ANN-MATH), the leading journal in Management Technovation has (2017/2018) impact factor equal to 4.802 (https://www.bioxbio.com/journal/TECHNOVATION), the leading journal in Social Science Psychological Inquiry has (2017/2018) impact factor equal to 26.364 (https://www.bioxbio.com/journal/PSYCHOL-INQ), the leading journal in Engineering Nature Nanotechnology has (2017/2018) impact factor equal to 37.490 (https://www.bioxbio.com/journal/NAT-NANOTECHNOL), the leading journal in Biology Nature Reviews Genetics has (2017/2018) impact factor equal to 41.465 (https://www.bioxbio.com/journal/NAT-REV-GENET), while the leading journal in Medicine New England Journal of Medicine https://www.bioxbio.com/journal/NEW-ENGL-J-MED has (2017/2018) impact factor equal to 79.258.

To Chia-Lin Chang and Romeo Meštrović :

This is a very interesting discussion about how to incorporate additional information in the calculation of the RG score (and possibly also TRI).

I seriously doubt that Citations, impact factor or h-index will be used in calculating the RG score.

The use of impact factors for tens of thousands of journals in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities would be a monumental task, as can be seen in the Web of Science/ Clarivate Analytics and Elsevier Scopus journals.

The use of Citations and the h-index would seem to be far easier to implement, especially as both are available, and Citations are already used in the calculation of TRI.

Many academics in medical-related research, where team research is standard, have TRI >> 50,000, with the highest I have seen being 122,521, with Citations = 243,462 and RG score = 56.37.

As academic researchers in medical-related disciplines tend not to engage in Q&A, their RG scores seldom exceed 60.

It is worth reflecting on why so many academics seem to emphasize the RG score when the most prolific researchers have relatively low RG scores.

Dear Michael John McAleer:

Thank you for the detailed information on the very high TRI in medical-related research disciplines, and how academics in medical-related disciplines do not seem to participate in the social media activities on RG, thereby leading to what might be regarded by some as relatively low RG scores.

I am certain that medical researchers who are interested in saving lives are not at all concerned about RG scores.

To Chia-Lin Chang:

It s a pleasure to try to contribute a useful Answer to the issues that I raised.

I enjoy the endless discussions in Q&A, where everyone seems to have an opinion.

This should be encouraged as most Questions are open ended and do not have uniquely correct Answers.

In connection with the RG score, as of 26 May 2019 I have compiled a list of 126 academics with RG score > 100.

I do not pretend to have a comprehensive list, but I am able to provide some data to support and encourage sensible empirical discussion about the RG score, whether you care about the RG score or not.

In my list, the highest RG score = 965.45, with h-index = 27.

Of the 126 academics, 32 have h-indexes in the range [0, 10).

Two academics have h-index = 0, and four have h-index = 1.

The remaining 94 academics have an h-index in the range [10, 91], with more than one-half of 94 having h-index > 25.

The majority of the 126 academics have h-index > 20.

This is not achieved through endless Q&A, contrary to what has been repeated in various threads relating to the RG score, but through serious academic research over an extended period.

The interesting related thread:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/A_Childs_Guide_to_Calculating_the_RG_Score

makes it clear that, in the absence of collusion, there is one thing that an academic cannot control, namely all the other academics who might interact with our published articles, unpublished research, projects, Reads, Recommendations, and Q&A.

Therefore, for those who might be interested in increasing their RG scores, for reasons that escape me, there is no guarantee that the RG score will change in the desired direction.

This interesting Question regarding the RG score is related to a number of threads regarding the calculation, meaning, interpretation, and usefulness, among others, of the RG score.

The RG score is a computer-generated empirical weighted sum of all activities and interactions on RG, excepting Citations and the h-index.

It seems that the RG score depends heavily on Reads and Recommendations which, in turn, is heavily affected by Q&A.

I would like to thank all the academics who have provided interesting and stimulating Answers to the Question.

It might be worth highlighting that an academic's RG score can change even if they do absolutely nothing for an entire week in terms of adding zero Q&A, Reads, Recommendations, published articles, and unpublished papers.

This is because the RG scores of all the other academics who interact with an academic's previous Q&A, Reads, Recommendations, published articles, and unpublished papers, during the week will affect your RG score.

The RG score is an interaction between an academic and every other academic who engages in exchange and interactions with all current and previous RG activities.

Good job Prof. Michael John McAleer on the analysis of researchers on this platform with high RG score. You may share other findings with us with charts and figures.

Informative and interesting threads to follow and contribute.

To Olutosin Ademola Otekunrin :

Many thanks for your interesting, informative, encouraging and positive Answer.

I am collecting metrics data on academics with RG scores > 50 to examine underlying patterns in the data, and will release it within the next few months.

Michael John McAleer, yesterday Michael Ueber put together some information that he posted onto another thread. From it, I created the attached document. I'm pretty sure that you have, in the past indicated that some metrics are not included in the RG score. I'd like to represent those (irrelevant) metrics in blue text.

Could you let me know which one should be converted to blue, please?

Do you have any other suggestions about this document? (You'll notice that I put something from you at the bottom of it.)

Thanks,

Robt.

Michael John McAleer, sorry, I didn't add the document. (I pressed ADD, not Add files.) Here it is.

RT.

To Robert:

If you read a charming Answer one day ago on:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Who_is_the_most_reputable_member_here_at_RG

I trust you will understand that I intend to keep a distance from anything you might be doing with a certain other academic on RG.

In a separate (now deleted) Answer, a comment I gave was described as "idiotic".

This can be seen in Chia-Lin Chang's Answer immediately following, where the deleted Answer has a paper trail.

I wish to emphasize that this has nothing to do with you.

Good luck with the research.

Michael John McAleer, thanks for getting back. There are some RG interactions I'm not aware of, and I certainly don't want to tread on any toes - and thanks for the reassurance about this particular "issue" not having anything to do with me.

Thanks for trying to keep things moving constructively. Actually, I'm going a bit cold on the whole focus on RG scores. They seem to be too mysterious to lay any store by. I'd just prefer to see helpful, collegial responses on RG that arise from worthwhile, questions. One example of that is your response to a question of mine, on a completely different thread, about normal distributions of data. One day I might even get back to you concerning that.

To Robert:

Many thanks for your understanding and kind consideration.

Like you, I spend time on Q&A for light relief from my serious day (and night) jobs at allegedly "mediocre" universities.

Like many things in life, if there is an abiding interest on a subject, it takes on a life of its own.

Such is the case of the RG score, the numerical value of which means nothing to me, but the same cannot be said for many other academics.

Allow me to provide some friendly advice on your proposed topic.

Consider one equation in 2 unknowns:

a + b = 1

which has an infinite number of solutions for a and b.

Trivially, 2 equations in 2 unknowns are needed to solve uniquely for a and b.

It follows that if you have n academics with m details on each, you need n = m.

[If you intend to conduct serious data analysis, you need n >> m.]

Having data on n = 2 academics is meaningless (unless m = n = 2, which would be pointless).

Good luck.

Michael John McAleer, that's interesting - and I confess that I let RG take over every so often when I'm actually doing more important things (I'm analysing some data and writing a journal article at the moment, and sometimes I just need a bit of light relief when something won't resolve itself in my brain).

Oh, and your string of universities look pretty good to me. You could well have been at many of them for only a short time BUT have profited enormously, yourself, and contributed well to others, nevertheless. Shun parochialism!

To Robert:

Economists are good at lecturing on optimal allocation under a budget constraint, but no so good at practising what they preach.

If you would like any comments on your paper, I guarantee that they will be sent super fast and will also be positive and encouraging.

That is what I do in my day job.

I have had numerous official government appointments at many leading universities internationally, including ANU, UWA and U of Sydney in Australia alone, and receive invitations on a weekly basis to visit universities overseas to give short courses on topics in which they seem to think I have expertise.

Perhaps they are misguided?

As posted on other threads, the RG score was introduced in August 2012.

RG has changed its scoring algorithm over time.

One limitation of the RG score is that it cannot be reproduced:

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2015/12/09/the-researchgate-score-a-good-example-of-a-bad-metric/#targetText=Launched%20in%202008%2C%20ResearchGate%20was,record%20and%20their%20academic%20expertise.

Many academics with high RG scores ( > 100) have very low metrics that purportedly enter into its calculation, such as Reads and Recommendations on Q&A, based on older scoring algorithms.

Such academics would have much lower RG scores if their metrics were to be evaluated using the most recent scoring algorithm.

As mentioned on related threads, the RG score depends on the RG scores of all other academic with whom we interact, and is defined at:

https://explore.researchgate.net/display/support/RG+Score

"Our algorithm looks at how your peers receive and evaluate these contributions, and who they are. The higher the RG Scores of those who interact with your research, the more your own score will increase. A low-quality contribution probably won't attract positive feedback and recognition from the community, so it won't contribute to your score in any significant way."

The statement in bold is the key as it refers to not attracting positive feedback (note: 'not positive' = negative).

This is how the RG score can decrease, namely when your activities on Q&A are recommended by academics with RG scores that are lower than yours."

In short, Recommendations work both ways, that is, when you recommend others, and when others recommend you.

This applies to your stock of Q&A, and all of your published and unpublished papers on RG.