Are papers on Research Gate publicly available?

Question

Do users need an account (on Research Gate) to view papers on the site? Or, are these papers available to anyone who finds the page for a paper (i.e., through Google Scholar)? Doing some investigating with different browsers and computers is a bit inconclusive to me.

If you visit a page (i.e., this page, then you can download the paper. But the pubs don't seem to be listed in Google Scholar search results unless you're logged in? — Joshua Rosenberg, Jan 11 '18 at 16:47
This seems a bit odd, but it looks like Google Scholar includes in search results ResearchGate papers that are published versions of papers, but not pre-print versions. For example this paper on Research Gate is a pre-print — Joshua Rosenberg, Jan 11 '18 at 16:53
Google has stopped indexing pre-prints that appear on GitHub: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/100232/google-scholar-stopped-indexing-pdfs-on-github-gitlab-pages Perhaps it has stopped indexing pre-prints on ResearchGate too. — user2768, Jan 11 '18 at 17:15
You might like to incorporate my first comment and your responses into your question (or just your responses, with some explanation). (Comments regularly get purged, questions don't.) — user2768, Jan 11 '18 at 17:18

henning · Answer 1 · 2018-01-12T14:20:46.573

2

In my experience, the papers are often not online, but RG let's you "request" a paper, meaning the website sends a canned email to the author, which they may or may not respond to. This is regardless of whether or not the user has an account. RG infamously listed authors with their publications who never registered, and these would thus receive all sorts of spam. I'm not sure if that is still the case.

edited Jan 12 '18 at 14:20

answered Jan 11 '18 at 16:40

henning

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thanks! I'm specifically thinking of papers that are uploaded, i.e. this one. Can you view that without logging in / having an account? – Joshua Rosenberg Jan 11 '18 at 16:46
@JoshuaRosenberg No, I'm not registered, but yes, I can download the file regardless. (It has only three pages, so I'm not sure if its truncated.) – henning Jan 11 '18 at 16:48

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 12 '18 at 13:55

It seems to depend on which version of the paper is uploaded. Google Scholar appears to no longer index pre-prints on Google Scholar (h/t user2768) but it does index papers that are the final, published versions. These final published versions are available both via direct links and via Google Scholar search results without the need for a ResearchGate account.

Are papers on Research Gate publicly available?

2 Answers2