ResearchGate and its scientific academic effect: an analytical exploratory study.

ResearchGate is one of the most popular academic social networking
sites that aims to help researchers collaborate and exchange information in an
academic social setting. This study sought to explore ResearchGate by analyzing
a set of available and downloaded publications on the site where the study
identified (401) publications to conduct a series of statistical analyzes aimed at
measuring the nature of the relationships between the age of posts and the
percentage of views and electronic attendance to them as well as the thematic
areas of publications available on the RG and distribution The categorical nature
of these publications, in addition to measuring the temporal, objective and factual
correlation of the publications with the size of the observations for those
publications, and evaluating the scientific impact of the sample's publications
according to the size of the observations that you have on ResearchGate, as well
as evaluating the science impact For the publications themselves according to
the categorical and thematic distribution of this, with an indication of the size and
nature of the association of social standards with the RG with its academic
standards, and the measurement of the relationship between ResearchGate
indicators and reference citations with Scopus. A Spearman scale is used to
measure the strength and nature of a relationship.
The results indicate that the year of publication is the most common year
for documents to be uploaded, which suggests that RG users rely on them to
archive old research along with the availability of recent research. The 
publications available over the sample years varied between four main subject
areas (medical and health sciences - Physical and Natural Sciences - Life
Sciences - Social Sciences and Humanities), as well as the qualitative diversity of
documents and materials available and loaded on the RG.
As the RG publications varied during the sample periods between
scientific articles - conference work - presentations - in addition to a variety of
other forms, the study also found an average direct correlation between the
observations and the reference citations, as well as the recommendations and
posts (0.5+ (While we find a complete direct correlation (1.0+) between both the
actual readings and downloads of the publication, and the citations, the study
also concludes that there is an intermediate direct relationship (+0.5) between
(Views, Recommendations and Participation as indicators of RG and reference
citations in Scopus as a traditional indicator The scientific value of the
publications, with a complete direct relationship (1.0+) between both readings
and downloads as indicators for RG and the volume of reference citations for the
same publications in Scopus, in addition to that there is a complete direct
correlation (1.0+) between both reference citations in RG and reference citations
in Scopus This study indicates that the alternative methods and indicators that
ResearchGate provides to evaluate scientific publications can be with further
study and analysis relied upon to measure the activity and scientific impact of the
publications or various thematic sectors.