Reflection on ResearchGate’s Terminating ResearchGate Score, and Interest Score, as Social Media Altmetrics and Academic Evaluation Tools

Abstract

ResearchGate (RG) is a popular academic social media networking platform for scientists, researchers, or academics (SRAs). RG automatically provides a metric, the RG Score, to each RG account holder that serves as a measure of that SRA’s “academic” worth, productivity, and interaction with other SRAs. In 2017, this metric was described by RG as “the RG Score takes all your research and turns it into a source of reputation,” indicating that “it is calculated based on the research in your profile and how other researchers interact with your content.” However, the precise manner in which the RG Score is calculated was never made public because it is a proprietary algorithm, and requests to RG to disclose details of the equations used to calculate it were not met. Not unsurprisingly, RG announced that it would be phasing out the RG Score in June 2022. This article examines what is known in the literature about the RG Score, which may be perceived as a skewed metric because it may add excessive weighting to select aspects, such as questions and answers, rather than to the published literature of an SRA. The RG Interest Score is also critiqued. An author-based metric such as the RG Score that reflects a realistic balance between the most important academic factors while downplaying fairly redundant aspects such as the volume of answers might benefit SRAs. As for any metric, the RG Score should not be used in isolation, be gamed, or used as the basis of any financial remuneration schemes.