@Deborah, thank you for sharing this article. I understand that Nature (among other paywall journals) are wary of Open Access publications gaining traction. The article consequently focuses on monetizing and 'market share' of the academic social network services (remember: RG is a service, the network are we - the users). 

We, too, should be wary of how RG as a company is going to manage its operations in the future. I would be very unhappy to see it setting up a screen full of Facebook like ads around our posts and papers. 

Dear Deborah, I just want to thank for you for calling my attention to this article. Very suggestive, indeed.

Why Nature writes about us only in terms of revenues and investors' funds? Something about network theory, graphs, DOS, SIR models, fitness? Was it Nature or Capital?

—g

Nature's report indeed indicates RG is not only just a social media as such, it is a very powerful place of knowledge exchange, experience sharing, hot debates and arguments of topics in almost all fields of science, philosophy, mathematics, technology, arts, politics, economics, literature,  environment, businesses, teaching, ethics, international affairs, etc and valuable professional guidance in providing information there off. The numbers of the research says it all.   

@Deborah, thank you for sharing this article. I understand that Nature (among other paywall journals) are wary of Open Access publications gaining traction. The article consequently focuses on monetizing and 'market share' of the academic social network services (remember: RG is a service, the network are we - the users). 

We, too, should be wary of how RG as a company is going to manage its operations in the future. I would be very unhappy to see it setting up a screen full of Facebook like ads around our posts and papers. 

Dear Deborah, Thank you for the question and the link. Very good reference. It seems ResearchGate is closing gap with Google Scholar.

Some excerpt from the paper: 

Titus Brown, a computational scientist at Michigan State University in East Lansing, is concerned about the sites’ business plans as they seek to survive. “What worries me is that at some point ResearchGate will use their information to make a profit in ways that we are uncomfortable with — or they will be bought by someone who will do that,” he says.

Mendeley does allow other computer programs to automatically pull out useful anonymized public information — such as which papers are viewed most by which researchers. But ResearchGate yet offer this service, although Madisch says that he is developing it.

It looked very odd to me as they compared some data with Google Scholar which is not a social networking site, rather is a search engine! Pathetic!

Dear Riaz The chart appeared in the fore-mentioned paper (see attachment) is for social networks as well as research-proling sites. More than 3,000 scientists and engineers told Nature about their awareness of various giant social networks and research-proling sites. So that comparison maybe justified, partially.

Another point about Google Scholar (GS) is that beside being a very good resource provider for academics you can invite co-authors too. Academics can tag other colleagues too something like followers in RG. However GS has no Question and Answer service. In terms of search facility I found GS better than RG. Anyway, I like both.

A comparison with music industry is something that has not been mentioned at the article.

Before the existence and success of YouTube, the music industry was powerful: It was too difficult to enter in and make your CD, while the latter was selling sometimes at a price more than $20.

Now, if you are an excellent singer or an interesting music group, you prepare your work, you upload it to YouTube and you count the downloads, that sometimes could be millions.

So, you really don't need a gigantic music company of the old time...

Now, just replace the word music industry with publishing industry, the word singer with scientist, the word song with article and the word YouTube with ResearchGate and you have the whole puzzle solved.

Dear Deborah,I also express my gratitude for sharing this report and paper with RG scholars to know the paramount importance of RG as compared with other social media, correction, scholar media. 

Dear Mahmoud Omid, I am aware of that. But don't you feel that the graph is communicating with you in a wrong way? Personally I believe every researcher do browse GS; whether you want or not. But RG (so for Academia.edu) is way more different than GS. Look at the title also. The title doesn't convey the message at a glance appropriately!

Thanks and regards.

Thanks everyone for the interesting comments. @Demetris yes the future will see there being big changes!

Please see relevant discussions here:

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

@Demetris - a very interesting analogy with the music industry. How would you include the peer review aspect, which the music industry doesn't need. Perhaps some form of pre-submission with open reviews and group voting as to whether to accept or revise?

This article provides great service to research Gate, but there is a problem is the interaction is little and not the level of subscribers