Alternative scientometrics: the ResearchGate social networking site

Abstract

This paper describes the difficulties of regular scientific measurement and introduces a new paradigm. Alternative measurements allow more opportunity to show the value of scientific output. ResearchGate as a scientific social networking site has several features which enable measuring scientific activity on informal platforms by sharing publications, networking and discussions. The reliability of alternative indicators as reads, number of publications, citation, h-index, followers and following and the complex RG score by Research Gate was examined in the case of researchers at the University of Pécs. A comparison was made with regular indicators from other sources. If was found that the indicators of Research Gate mostly present the same results as regular indicators. The reason is that not all functions are used by researchers. In order to use the RG score as an official measurement it would be necessary to make researchers acquainted with the full choice of different functions.