Publish the unpublishable with ResearchGate

ResearchGate recently announced that they now encourage researchers to share data through their platform. They hope to get more unpublished information out in the open to fuel scientific discussion. Such information include:

  • Datasets and raw data
  • Negative results
  • Figures and media files
  • Unpublished articles

ResearchgatePublishTool

This new service comes in addition to a set of other services that already allow researchers to share data and unpublished information. ResearchGate, with their 2+ million users, will probably quickly become one of the main platform to publish such information. By steadily releasing new services, ResearchGate seems to be taking the lead as a social platform for scientific exchange.  However published data should be easily searchable, citable and not prisoner of proprietary formats. This is not the case as of today, and I would be curious to learn more about efforts currently underway to address these issues.

ResearchGate takes over ScholarZ

ResearchGate, the 2-million user social network for researchers is taking over ScholarZ, an online collaboration tool and reference manager based in Würzburg, Germany. The acquisition was announced by both parties through their blogs and a press release.

The press release explains that “Scholarz.net will be discontinuing its services come January 10, 2013. The platform’s users are requested to back-up all files they have stored on scholarz.net and to open a new account at ResearchGate. A simple to use export tool has been provided.

This might be the beginning of what may be seen as a necessary consolidation trend in an industry that saw a great number of competing sites pop up over a short period of time, with many providing similar services.
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