I prefer ResearchGate, as it's more interactive and easier to navigate. However, I'm more familiar with ResearchGate, so maybe I'm biased. I think ResearchGate lays a heavier focus on collaboration, discovery and interaction, whereas Academia.edu is trying to encourage researchers to share their articles directly with the community, i. e. they cover the publication aspect more directly. And the third big player, Mendeley, is definitely the best solution for literature search and citation management. In the end, all of the three have their strengths (niches) and I perceive them as being complements rather than substitutes.

Well, I strongly feel that ResearchGate really improves the learning curve just by giving the updates on the subject area you want to follow and the variety of questions and possibilities of different approaches to answer boost your thinking as well as give you Ideas to work on :)

ResearchGate seems to be more inviting for activity and easier to navigate. I check Academia.edu regularly, but I am more active on ResearchGate.

Thanks Lutz, I almost forgot about Mendeley and now added it to the question.

I comment on ResearchGate and Mendeley, as I don't know about Academia.edu.

There are some aspects of ResearchGate that are more developed than in Mendeley: follow other researchers, better search tools to find other researchers and connexions between people (advisors and co-authors).

But overall, I find the combination of reference manager and social network provided by Mendeley extremely useful. I am using Mendeley everyday for my research, and find it very useful to organise my references and pdf files, search them, find new publications, collaborate, share papers in groups. The problem of ResearchGate is that people will update their publication list once, and forget about it. But since Mendeley is used also to organize your other papers, you are more likely to keep your publication list updated.

Some other remarks:

- I find the profile on Mendeley more flexible and attractive than on ResearchGate (see http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/marie-jean-thoraval/ for instance). You can add links to your institutions, awards, ...

- It is much easier to access papers from Mendeley website (you can click on the doi and the publisher's website). I find it frustrating in ResearchGate: you need to leave the website and google a paper that you are interested in. On Mendeley, I can also add it to my library with one click.

- Profiles on ResearchGate are created without saying or asking researchers. This leads to wrong profiles and unreliable information.

- I haven't found the way to edit my publications after adding it.

- Mendeley separates by publication types on your profile.

Have to agree with Chritsoph (Lutz). I don't think this is an either or choice. I have no personal experience of Academia.edu but I do use Mendeley and ResearchGate. I just have to say this straight away, Mendeley is the better reference handling software. Both in its desktop and web version. While ResearchGate can handle bibliographic data it is clunky and limited. The profiles are comparable. I use both. The full text handling of ResearchGate is good, but again there are very different things going on here, Menedely handles .pdfs as part of its reference functionality. Personally I couldn't manage my references without it. ResearchGate I see as more a repository. So I have uploaded the full text of papers I have authored on RG following the "Green Route" of personal archiving. I also have a full bibliography on my Mendeley profile. I do like the social networking aspects of both Mendeley and RG, I find they plug into two slightly different communities which I enjoy and participate in both. My view is that this comparison is interesting but slightly misleading. Get both and all angles will be covered.

I have ended up registered on all three of them and started wondering if 'meta-engine' with suitable ontology will pop up somewhere!

An interesting aspect of ResearchGate is much wider audience, if I dare to say 'emerging markets' - I like it a lot.

ResearchGate is much more interactive. The Projects are great. The way the platform is designed it "communicates" to the user in friendly way. The statistics and the Scoring is a great invitation / encouragement to participate. Sure, there is a lot to improve on it as well. Mendeley? Should I try it?

A year ago I compared four network for researchers (VIVO, RG, Mendeley and Epernicus) in term of their interfaces and the presence of our researchers in those networks http://ufdc.ufl.edu/IR00000452/00001. I have profiles on Academia, LinkedIn, Mendeley, Nature network, etc. Mendeley works more as a reference management system with both online and desktop versions and I know many researchers use it to manage their bibliographies and to connect with people with similar interests. Although Mendeley has a social network integrated, it is not as active as ResearchGate. I agree with some researchers here who mentioned that RG organization around topics of interest is a plus when interacting with your peers. None of the aforementioned networks is as active as RG is. RG has made significant improvements to its interface making the experience of interacting with researchers around the world really pleasant. In terms of reference mangement Mendeley might be superior than RG, however there is no question about RG superiority over Mendeley in terms of social networking.

Academia: I have many colleagues there but there is not much activity on this social network

Regarding LinkedIn,

I see lots of commercial activity, business promoting posts and most of the groups are heavily censored, private interests are the main drive in mediating many of the groups. Mendeley encourages to keep your work in progress in their network, your ideas, your notes. I advise against it as the secrecy is all gone.

Here part of their statements:

Mendeley Desktop makes your research life easier...

"Capture your thoughts on research papers by adding annotations and highlights."

Well, what is wrong to have such thoughts written in your computer? USB stick? hard drive ?

Internet use, networking is a great tool but like any other tools, if not used properly or even abused it can hurt you, and it may "bleed" very bad. You may never know why a certain idea / findings may propel some business ideas, inventions or experiments by well financed laboratories, institutions.

I do not mean to offend anyone, the above are just a few words of caution.

Regards,

Adrian TW

Research Gate is the best for research oriented persons. This helps a lot to the young research scholar to clear their doubt .

I used both Academia.edu and Research Gate. I enjoyed both site and listed my papers in both site simultaneously. Both have their plus and minuses. Since the plus of Research Gate has been highlighted by other commentators, I will focus on the pluses of Academia.edu.

Academia.edu has better tracking statistics. Yes they have no RG equivalent, but I can track the traffic viewing and downloading my papers, as well as their country of origin. Yes the activity and interaction there is markedly more subdued than RG, but Academia has better accessibility and visibility from Google that I believe more people accessed my works from Academia.edu than RG. However, since the traffic in Academia.edu comes (mostly) from Google, I believe that the visitors of RG is more targetted and field-specific than Academia.edu.

I agree with Imam Salehudin's analysis, and have a preference for Academia.edu.

I find researchgate well suited for collaboration and active discussions. It is relevant for my PhD studies. The discussions are interesting and there are a lot of views shared across. It is great place for learning and sharing ideas.

I have found plagiarised papers posted on Academia, but not on ResearchGate.

ResearchGate is much better. One can communicate quickly with community in case of a question, have nice statistics about your work and is really a good platform for sharing the research.

ResearchGate - the best solution for communication and discussion. My favorite social network.

I think all these networks are complementary, one depends on the objective pursued.

I use RG and Academia both but I prefer RG for the follwoing reasons:

1. Better visibility of your research work.

2. Q&A section for better discussuon in a particular issue.

3.Very good statistical analysis of our serearch work.

4.Availability of research papers.

5.Shareing knowledge with well known researchers and scientists and professors.

6.It is very helpful for young researchers to promote or to show their research work.

For all of the above I prefer RG...

No doubt its great for collaborations, brainstorming, more interactive, easier to navigate, etc. The more I use it the more I prefer it....

with regard to the above, by it I meant RG, namely the more I use it the more I prefer ResearcGate (RG)

Another reason is tha I find it more democratic: you see a diversity of opinions, arguments, polemics, observations, perspectives or views with regard to the answers many researchers pose in response to the Questons...

RG is very active on interaction front. It is a wonderful medium for sharing and collaboration . You also enjoy interacting with global peers in your areas of interest.. Indirectly, it also promotes interdisciplinary areas. As a researcher, you may have multiple interests.

Academia is good to get in touch with research community direly whereas Mendeley active forum for referencing work.

I use them as a basket whereby i can enhance my reach and visibility as a researcher.

Thank you Mohammed, and I agree with S G Deshmukh, this is why I prefer RG

ResearchGate and Academia.edu are very similar social networks for scientists, each with their particular strengths and software, but I foresee a better future for ResearchGate because of its commitment to sociability, though not as much as Linkedin, my favorite one. Why not also consider Linkedin as an academic network?

http://howtopublishinjournals.com/2014/05/18/academic-networks-contest-researchgate-vs-academia-vs-mendeley/

I use both Academia.edu and RG but find RG somewhat annoying in that it does not find articles from non mainstream research areas like mine. I have about 100 publications and it only managed to find about 5 of them. It also fails to pick up on citations that other sites do, like goole scholar do… I have 117 citations there but only 2 on RG. It also gives a biased impact rating by crediting answers to questions, like this, and even William Perez' slim effort above… giving a rather distorted view of a researcher's genuine output, impact, etc...

I quite agree with David Luke. It's also annoying to find one's RG score not increasing even though papers are written and networking is progressing.

RG is good in terms of interaction and brain storming with research community

Academia is more subjective towards articles and less on iteration

LinkedIn is more like FB and tumblr i suppose , less article sharing and more other stuff

Endnote is a better option for referencing citations

Researcher ID signifies an identification and very less collaboration activities

Google scholar gathers all your work and calculate an H factor and less scholar inter communication

RG needs to improve its visibility and for that matter it may incorporate Goggle scholar citations and data

ResearchGate is addictive because it uses variable-ratio reinforcement schedules to condition a high-rate of response behaviors. The others do not use this type of reward system. Even though the points earned on ResearchGate can do very little in terms of promotion and tenure decisions at my school, having a high RG Score is ego gratifying. Thus, very additive--and a lot of fun too! Such as, answering this question is a lot of fun. :-)

Great question!

This latest article from Nature should sum up the 'current' comparison between the three.

http://www.nature.com/news/online-collaboration-scientists-and-the-social-network-1.15711

I view RG as more democratic, since it makes diverse research results, papers, studies, etc. available to all.

Some RG skeptics: http://enjoythedisruption.com/post/52304544394/researchgate-to-nowhere

I like and use both Academia and RG

Personal annoyance - co-authors do not necessarily appear, some citations appear automatically, some manually

I think one bug is that RG doesn't recognize duplicate entries.

For example, I have already uploaded a paper and I still get invited to accept authorship, and when I do, I get a duplicate listing on my profile.

I too prefer Research Gate (RG) and may be bias as I am accustomed to it more. However, I  agree with Christoph Lutz's observation that they complement each other, namely RG, Mendeley and Academia, each adding something to the equation. 

A definite plus on RG is that actually we are having this conversation here. Do not know much about Academia.edu. I decided not to follow all the networks or it can take an awful lots of time. Mendeley is great for reference managing and RG is better a social network. 

I agree with Yasir Nawab; I like RG very much However, the citation numbers in RG are very incomplete. If you track a paper or researcher in Scopus, for example, you will find many more citations than the number provided by RG. Just something improve. 

I agree with Irene Kamberidou that they are complementary. The problem is if it is worth the time and effort to follow several social networks or if that end swallowing all your time. If you choose one you might miss interesting facts and ideas but if you follow them all you might end with information overload. A delicate equilibrium...

Dear David, you are absolutely right.That's what happened to me, so I stopped or actually never really started using Academia...

I think both cannot really be compared. Mendeley is essentially a reference manager with the option to share literature with your peers.

Research Gate focuses on showcasing your research among your peers and management of publications is absolutely abysmal. It is virtually impossible to correct erroneous entries, especially if others uploaded the entries.  Quite annoying. You receive invitations where you are asked to accept authorship of publications where you have been an editor or references that someone uploaded as a "dataset" though these are journal articles, etc.  I asked support to provide options to fix this, but they can't be bothered...

I used to have accounts on both. What annoyed me about academia.edu is that they force people to become members to read the papers I uploaded. That's not acceptable, so I killed my account.

A nuisance about researchgate is that it assumes a publication to be a 'journal article' - which is very wrong in the humanities. Easy to change, too.

(If I click on 'add publication' I get 'journal article' as the only option for real publications, but if I add manually then, I can use 'book'. Still, if I use 'book' it assumes there must be an 'author' - as if there were no edited books.)

I have posted papers on both RG and Academia. Presumably that slightly increases chance of any particular article being found by someone searching via Google or other search engine, but at the same time cuts the hit rate for each parallel copy, so that stats calculated within either RG or Academia are incomplete and misleading.

The uncombined multiple copies of articles that RG accumulates also add meaningless noise to usage statistics, a problem that can arise but is easily fixed on Academia or even a Google Scholar profile. If keeping the file archive tidy were most important I'd drop RG immediately. But what the hey, I didn't come here for the stats or for tidiness.

I have accounts on ResearchGate, Academia.edu and Google Scholar. RG seems the most user-friendly to me. It also facilitates interactions between researchers (full-text request is a big plus in that respect - it is handy, easy to use and easy to respond to).

A downside for RG is the multiple occurrence of the same paper, caused by slight differences in the title given by its various authors.

When it comes to Academia.edu, I like the map showing where in the World your visitors come from, but it's pretty much the only thing it has over RG.

What I apppreciate about Google Scholar is that it calculates the h-index, often required in institutional evaluation around here.

I think Research Gate is more interactive than Academia. This facilitates contact among researchers and permits faster contributions to my research.

Academia.edu recently switched to more premium business model by offering reports and advanced stats for those who pay. On the other hand, it stopped providing several stats that used to be free and moved it behind the paywall. I hope RG does not follow suit.

It is bad enough to work / research and pay to tell others the results of your work. Insane. Oh ! projects, sponsorship ? What about self sponsoring ? I mean, begging someone the fund your projects and them begging to sponsor you to tell others .... moving money around it is called "economy". Well, sure , nothing happens without money as no electricity is being produced if water does not fall or wind blowing into turbines. I think there are other ways beyond Adam Smith roots concepts. A major tuneup that may take decades or even centuries will bring human species' maturity. Will it? If we last as long, may be ~ ! 

I prefer the interactions in RG than that in Academia.edu. Moreover, Academia's introduction of premium version is a spoiler. 

In my opinion all networks must be free. It is not good that Academia.edu introduce some statistics only for premium accounts with payment.

I use Mendeley more as a reference manager, Academia.edu as a platform to get update on colleagues research outputs, which RG also does so well in. RG and Academia seems complementary in this area but RG platform provides a more interactive community!

I like RG more and use it to collect my research

I find it annoying that Academia sends offers for different services/statistics by e-mail and when you show interest, it asks for payment. I find it aggressive. I put academia.edu on my black list of e-mail senders.

I also find it annoying and disappointing to be asked to pay around 80 euro to be able to see citations or "mentions", etc. Research Gate is more user-friendly, available and free of charge to all, providing opportunities to new and young researchers and scientists to connect without cost.

Need to add: beware of information overload when using many networks...Time consuming and addictive!

I agree total with Matt

In order to provide some counterpoints, Academia.edu has some far better statistics that are available that let you see search terms, download numbers, views, etc.

RG clearly has some nice forums and discussion platforms, but the big big downside of these is that using the forum has a grossly overweight impact on your RG score. There are articles written that point how how people have learned to 'game' their RG score by simply spending lots of time in the fora. While useful, I don't think this needs to be incentivized in the RG score.

information I would like but do not know the answer to.... members of RG/academia.edu by discipline?

that I am right everybody knows

that I did not obtain the right everybody knows

So,please correct this situation involving a new paradigm giving us new op-

portunities.

ResearchGate over Academia

I prefer ResearchGate over Academia. Academia is just flooding my mailbox pressing me to upgrade to Premium - it's all about the money with that platform.

ResearchGate is currently bay far more friendlier and allows more interaction

The interface in Academia and RG is different. The options 'pluses' and 'minuses' for Academia that I have noticed:

- contras: you cannot upload codes (programming codes, I mean) in Academia: .tex or .r formats are "not supported", while on RG you can upload your scripts and codes. You can only 'link' to existing repository (github) but the format itself is not supported. This is a serious minus if you code for your research.

+ all papers have preview (small icons), so you can 'view' the grafics immediately on Academia without downloading the file like here.

- jpg formats are also not supported in Academia (you need to convert graphics - images or maps - into pdfs).

+ the papers have more meta data info in Academia (even 'organization', 'location', 'event dates' etc). I think it is more structured in terms of how the papers are represented, more 'catalogue-like'. And they all have previews. Just compare how your papers look here and there. The interface is different. In terms of papers preview and meta data I prefer more Academia.

- In terms of 'data sharing and communications with colleagues' the RG is somewhat better than Academia (more 'lively' I think.. )

I prefer RG because it is an interactive platform with no cost.

Following

RG is my choice because it is a great platform to gain knowledge.

RG is easier to contact other researchers than academia and to get great ideas

RG more familiar and easier to use than others apps

Regarding my recent experience, for the past two weeks Academia.edu no longer allows me to upload my work (papers, articles, drafts, ets). I wrote to Academia twice about this problem and recieved the exact -same response, which included some countries are now having problems uploading... I followed their instructions but still could not upload any papers. So I singed up for Academia Premium two days ago, assuming the problems would be solved, but it still hasn't...so I asked to be reimbursed (cancel my Academia Premium) and be refunded. I'll let you know if the return my payment. So I suggest if you have Academia.edu. try uploading anything, see if it is still working in your country.

Follow up: Research Gate is undeniably more reliable. T his is the typical message I got (twice in two weeks) for no longer being able to upload papers on ACADEMIA.edu.: " We’re sorry you’re having trouble uploading papers! We are currently experiencing an issue where users from some countries may have trouble uploading papers to the site. Here are some possible workarounds to get your paper uploaded to Academia. However, please be aware these options are not guaranteed to work.- Try uploading again in 10-15 minutes. - Reduce the size of your upload, such as compressing quality or reducing pages to upload. - If you have a VPN or other region-changing software, set your VPN to a point in the United States or Canada.While we are currently working on resolving this issue, unfortunately the bug has proven to be extremely complex and we do not have a set date for when it will be resolved. Again, we apologize for the frustration that this has caused.Please let us know if we can help you with anything else at this time. Best wishes,

Hannah Academia.edu

I find RG mentally challenging which is a great thing for anyone who wants to learn.

I have no experienced other than Research Gate. But, what ever may be the site, I think we should never stop in publishing good papers .

From what I have come across, I found ResearchGate more interactive among the members than the others mentioned.

I asked a similar question recently and I believe that some answers can be relevant to this issue ...

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

Has anything change ever since?

Feel free to share your thoughts!

Who reads in 2019 thus enjoys reading this topic after seven years pls make some noise ^hands up^

Where is the RG android app???

A number of facets of researcher activity are covered in RG. Research productivity parameters and research community connectivity are covered in RG. It is interesting and useful.

Dear Colleagues and Friends from RG, Does any of you have your profiles on all these scientific portals and carried out a comparative analysis? I regularly use the Research Gate portal, because this portal enables establishing contacts with researchers and scientists also operating in other countries. Are there any significant differences between the two science portals listed above? Apparently, the functionality of both scientific portals is very similar. However, are there any significant differences in the scope of information services offered, searching for publications as well as researchers and scientists operating in specific science disciplines? Does any of you have your profiles on all these scientific portals and conducted a comparative analysis to answer the question: what are the key differences between these portals?

Please reply

I invite you to discussion

Thank you very much

Best wishes

RG is more interactive among the members of RG. A good platform for the scientific community.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_is_Academia_analyticedu_different_from_Researchgate?isAnswerFieldFocused=true

I wouldn't pay for academia fees just to find papers and interact with other researchers with similar interests. RG all the way.

For a simple and nominal research worker like me, I find, RG is good enough.

Research Gate is my favorite. Nice review, frequent update, stats, visiting people, direct links and networks, user friendly platform.

The others are no good. Researchgate has been very good to popularize my work. For example, see how many views I have already got for the following paper:

researchgate.net/publication/322363581_Osmar_the_open-source_microsyringe_autosampler

I do have Mandalay and academia both, Yes I heavily use Mandalay for managing my references, but have a problem with other guys, academia. see, you got a free air ticket, and you board to the aircraft, you sit on the seat, but when you want to fasten belt they ask for money, even if you want to see outside from the window - they need money, very bad, only the researches from a selected lot, rarely using. But RG is best and always recommended to my students and encourage them to share their work and get feedback from real academics and professionals.

No comment about Academia.edu and Mendeley but to me ResearchGate is the best. It satisfies me in all respect for my research activities.

For me, the RG is working well. Academia seems to just want to know my card number, besides sending me several emails that don't help me at all. Mendeley I never tried to use.

just wanted to add that Mendeley has discontinued the networking bit, there are no profiles now. https://www.mendeley.com/reference-management/reference-manager/

I concur, RG is the boss.