ResearchGATE – a new social networking site for scientists

Hardly a day passes without a new social networking site appears inspired by the success of Facebook. Not even scientists are forgotten. I have previously mentioned social networks for scientists such as ResearcherID and Nature Networks.

Now yet another social site aimed at the scientific community has appeared. ResearchGATE, however, is in contrat to the former sites developed and run by younger scientists from the United States and Germany. During the first year of the site, they have already built an impressive list of partnerships including the Max Planck Institute and EURAXESS, the European Union run portal for science jobs and information.

Like in other social networks you can fill out a long list of interests and research skills. There is also the possibility to join groups of which there are more than 800. The site, however, is somewhat biased towards the life sciences and I fail to see what this site has to offer that Nature Networks do not. However, they do seem to have an impressive growth rate and has apparently already reached 17.000 users. And as we al know the number of users is what determines the usefulness of all social networking sites.