I agree overall with Clarinda. LinkedIn is a global community developed as a means of individuals and companies to connect with each other. Shared interests are emphasised by the individual joining up to 50 groups - which may be geographic, topical or company focussed. Certainly we can find and connect with people with common interests easily on LInkedIn - for example, Clarinda and I are 3rd level connections, as I am also with Herve. Yet I do not appear to be connected to Ulf-Dietrich Reips.
I see Research Gate to be a very focussed environment, where we can find more in depth content, research and information and an easier path to link up with topical experts.
As stated before, LinkedIN and ResearchGate are very different. I think they don't replace each other at all.
LinkedIN is perhaps better if you work in a company or are seeking to do that, or you own a company and need to find new clients or collaborators. In ResearchGate it doesn't work that way, so it is not suited for company-employee relationships.
In an academic environment, i think LinkedIN is much weaker. The "publications" plugin in LinkedIN is lousy, it always lists you as first author, doesn't let you publish things in issues that will come in the future (which now happens almost every time with "online first"), etc. etc. ResearchGate is highly focused on sharing and discussing scientific research, and in my opinion does that much better than LinkedIN.
We have to view this question in the context of how social media evolve. LinkedIn is a generic platform for professional social networking, and for specific professional interests, one has to do a lot of scouting around for relevant groups and, then, sifting of content within groups. ResearchGate seems to be much more laser-focused on academic research, so it may have the potential to accelerate academic research discussions at a much faster pace and with more depth than LinkedIn.
On the other hand, if one wanted to do net-based ethnography of a topic, LinkedIn groups represent a much richer "virtual field" to wallow and troll in than ResearchGate. I am in fact currently using such a 'net-based ethnography' approach to understand the discourses on sustainability. For this, LinkedIn groups are very valuable because the content available (numbers, variety, sources/backgrounds of posters) are much more varied than in ResearchGate.
You can't compare LinkedIn and ResearchGate.
ResearchGate network allows researchers to ask questions, get answers and collaborate in different ways. Also, to publish relevant academic results (publications, research data sets, other papers, documentation etc.).
LinkedIn is a professional networking portal from the business viewpoint and for career development and self-promotion, where one fills out his or hers profile with relevant professional information related to work experience and where potential HR managers can search for job candidates based on their declared and expressed work experience and results, as well as their professional traits (language skills, field of work, etc.)
On ResearchGate, you don't have HRs constantly bombarding you with work offers, asking for interviews for job vacancies like you see weekly on a fully complete professional LinkedIn account. Instead, on ResearchGate, you get research and educational institutional that post job openings for different academic and research positions where users can chose to apply if they wish. On LinkedIn, job opening ads aren't very frequent or dominant, but can certainly be found for engineering and IT field of work, as well as marketing and PR field.
- ResearchGate is for researchers to collaborate and work together and possibly apply for new academic prospects.
- LinkedIn is for professionals to promote current and seek new career opportunities.
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