I think both are good platforms, academic social networks, for researchers. Probably in Academia one can find more reliable sources of documents, because, I think, they are more tide with strong research institutions, like research centres and high ranked universities, specially in USA. But at the same time, I realize that I don't have enough information to confirm that statement.
Researchgate, on the other hand, is more interactive, more collaboration and communication oriented. Services in RG are free, while in Academia several of them are payment based. Being both classified as academic social networks, RG, from my point of view, is more SOCIAL, correspondingly with current trends in Education and Science related activities.
If in virtual education there is a concept, PLE (personal learning environment), in other activities, like research, with strong dependency on online interaction and communications, there should be the concept of PWE (personal working environment; even, in the given case, could be specified as PRE, personal research environment), and in the PWE of every researcher there should coexist both tools; there are not "silver bullets" (except in the World of vampires...).
Search for your own papers on the web. I find the Acedemia site much more in the links. Therefore, although RG is more interactive to participants, the acedemia site provides better exposure to data miners.Semantic scholar site is good too for data miners.
I use them both, but I prefer RG. It requires a more active participation; it is easier exchange information between researchers; I don't have to pay nothing to know my readers, institutions, etc.
Of course RG is better than academia.edu for many reasons; the interaction between researchers; You can create projects and their parts, they have many types of documents to upload from preprint, data, articles, etc. can be a research manager, Academia.edu is also very good, the most important is the database of written work but as it is not very popular, its cost in the first world is good but for other areas it is very high.
None of the commentators seem to appreciate the ability of other researchers to data mine for their papers. Putting a paper out doesn't stop until others read it.
RG seems to be increasing in this, but Acedemia.edu is still better.
John Hodge Thanks your opinion share, can you please elaborate how academia is better.
Thanks to other too
Nagwa Kassem Ashtar Saleh Adolfo Catral Sanabria Carine Temegne Nono Maham Muzamil Mohammad Mehdizadeh Tariq Almaliky Rzger A. Abdula Fares F. Fares Segun Michael Abegunde Carlos Alberto Matos Trindade Andrey Skorobogatov
RG. It gives me facebook flavour. But One thing i need to say, maybe, i am not sure, Academia charges an amount for premium user. Though i have no premium account.
Obviously research gate.. Better than academia. Because lots of thing's we can do like create project, add conference work, publication expand rate is also high in research gate. It's like Facebook very easy to learn system operations. In short it is best platform for Researcher who want collaboration work from one country to another simple way to connect another researchers..
I have an account of each but I prefer RG for scholarly discussions like this.
RgG has a better way of monitoring your achievements and you got to see the profile of who is reading your articles unlike academia that you need to pay to see the individuals reading your paper. But it is easier to create an account in academia.