One million members, one million researchers, one million brains.

A pretty smart guy once said: ‘it is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others’. - Michel de Montaigne

We think these are wise words indeed.

Today marks a milestone in the history of ResearchGate: over one million users are now networking, collaborating and sharing knowledge through our platform.

To connect one million people is to connect the potential of one million brains. One lone brain is already quite impressive; as proof we decided to put together a few facts on what it can do and what makes it tick:

• Our brains experience on average 70,000 thoughts each day.  Imagine that.

• A brain generates around 20 watts of power daily. That’s about enough to power a light bulb. Or a lot of ideas.

• 750 - 1,000 ml of blood flow through the brain every minute. You could fill 3 soda cans with all that. But it probably wouldn’t be as nice as a cold cola.

• There are 100,000 miles of blood vessels in the brain. About enough to circle the earth three times. Could get a bit messy though.

• 100 billion neurons go into making our brain what it is. Roughly the same amount as there are stars in our galaxy. That’s pretty mind-blowing.

If this is just one brain, imagine what one million could do together.

1,000,000 is a big number.  And we’re just getting started.

Network Updates

As part of our continued commitment to an improved user experience, we’re always on the lookout for those little changes that can make a big difference: here are some of the most recent updates.

We’ve cleaned up the visual design of our Research Blog and your personal blog. The Research Blog is always on the lookout for quality posts from the ResearchGate community, so why not submit something today?

We’ve done some behind-the-scenes work to make it faster and easier to fulfill your full text requests.

Posting a job to Research Jobs just got easier.  Make your listing and start recruiting from over 900,000 researchers from around the world today!

Getting your colleagues to join ResearchGate is now much more straightforward: we’ve streamlined the invitation function to make the process quicker. If you have any feedback or ideas let us know!

Add us on Facebook

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Or send us a message via our contact form.

Profiles represent people: this is why the new ResearchGate profile was designed with you in mind. 

Start with yourself:

Your profile is where it all begins: add a photo and then let people know where you work, what your research interests are and how they can get in touch with you.  Add a few more details about your educational background, skills, grants and conferences to round out your online research resume.

As a user of the ResearchGate network you'll have noticed that we've had a massive update in the way the platform looks and operates. As it is in science, a greater level of organization results in a greater level of productivity; the new design is intended to make site navigation simpler and more efficient, improving access to the information that is valuable to you and making it easier for you to contribute to the research community.  The website is a combination of the strongest elements of the previous design with an improved functionality.

The tools that you use on a regular basis like the literature search, groups, file sharing, micro-feed, and job search are all still there, but we are continuously working on how we can optimize the way you use them and how their function can improved.  These changes are based on feedback we've received from you as well as ideas we've had that we will enhance the network.  Over the next couple of weeks we'll go through how the new features have been implemented into the network and how you can get the most out of them.

It's an exciting time at ResearchGate, and as always we value your feedback and invite your questions as we progress.

To improve navigation throughout the site, we’ve now enhanced our search engi ne and launched suggestion based search. Just start typing in a name or a scientific keyword and you’ll instantly receive a selection of profiles, groups, events and jobs matching your query. Here’s an example:

Click here to start searching

To increase the ability to search for and connect with researchers with related interests and fields, ResearchGATE profiles now feature hyperlinks for all fields on the 'About Me' page. 

This feature allows you to click on a single word or term, such as a specific institution or research area, and see the results of other profiles in the community that match your search term. 

We hope this feature will increase the efficiency and accessibility of making new contacts, or even just to see who is involved in what field or who has a specific skill set.

As always, we welcome any feedback or ideas you have.

Members can Communicate more Efficiently and Effectively with Other Scientists of Similar Interests; More than 31,000 Sigma Xi Members are Registered  

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC and BERLIN– October 5, 2010 – ResearchGATE, the professional social network for scientists and researchers, announced today that SIGMA XI, The Scientific Research Society, has implemented its social networking platform for its more than 60,000 members – students, researchers, and scientists.  More than 200 Nobel laureates have been members of Sigma Xi, including Albert Einstein, James Watson & Francis Crick, and more.  Since the sub-community has been implemented, more than 31,000 Sigma Xi members have joined. 

 “With ResearchGATE our members of Sigma Xi will now have the ability to share their profiles with other members, see updates from other scientists and researchers in their network with the new microblogging feature, and can share documents and data effortlessly so that scientists can work more effectively together and learn from previous experiments,” said Paul C. Kettler, Founder of the Nordic Chapter of Sigma Xi, and leader of Sigma Xi’s networking implementation project.  “Our 124-year-old Society now looks forward enthusiastically to a long and mutually rewarding association with ResearchGATE in this new and exciting age of scientific discovery."

“Our social networking platform is making information for experiments, data and new developments accessible to all scientists and researchers within the community,” said Ijad Madisch, co-founder and CEO of ResearchGATE.  “Our goal is to bring new discoveries together and available around the globe. Sigma Xi has a vast network of experts who will greatly benefit from this new way of information sharing and we look forward to working with them.”

“To be able to interrelate and connect with others in a similar or diverse areas of science to establish and build on relationships is important, " said Myron Scholes, Nobel laureate and general partner of Platinum Grove Asset Management. “Reducing the cost of communication increases connectivity and enhances the productivity of scientists."

ResearchGATE has now made it easier to integrate all of your social media platforms by allowing you to log in to your profile with either your Facebook, LinkedIN, FriendFeed, or Twitter accounts. 

You can widen the impact of your ResearchGATE activity, such as sharing your publication or mini-feeds, with your contacts from these other networks. 

The development of the ResearchGATE community and the services we provide depends on your feedback so we can continue to offer researchers and scientists like you the best possible platform. 

We welcome your feedback and ideas as we continue to grow.

ResearchGATE is delighted to work together with the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings and has created a community specifically for their members and attendees as a way to continue discussions and scientific collaboration even after the meeting is over.

Today, it is with great pride that the ResearchGATE team announces that it has welcomed the 400,000th researcher to its scientific network. The 400,000th User is a researcher from United States of America conducting research in Cell Biology.  As ResearchGATE continues to evolve, we will look forward to innovating science and growing this community together.  The next 6 weeks will be very exciting, because we have several new application in our pipeline. We will keep you updated. Thanks again for your great feedback. 

To enable you to broadcast your ResearchGATE updates to other networks and import status updates from other networks, we have connected the ResearchGATE feed to other network feeds: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and FriendFeed can now be connected to your profile. You have control over each individual connector of whether you want to export or import updates. Single status updates retrieved from other networks can be also deleted from your home feed. If you know of other networks, which we should support as a network connector to Researchgate, please contact us. 

Your feedback is invaluable to us, and we always welcome your ideas and feedback. We are looking forward to hearing from you.

The concept of 'following' was introduced to ResearchGATE. To 'follow' a member in the ResearchGATE community means that you will receive updates on various aspects of the their activity such as status updates, when they upload a full-text paper, and comments they make in discussions. Of course this goes both ways, and other members will be able to follow you as well and keep up-to-date with your activity. You will have full control over what is included in your 'follow' updates, which can be accessed under the settings tab on your profile.

Over the past 2 weeks we have launched several new features in ResearchGATE - more is on the way, but I'd like to describe the newly launched features in detail for now.

Microblogging

The first big change is the implementation of a scientific microblog format within the ResearchGATE network. Feedback we were receiving from the community was quite unanimous: Having a microblogging tool connected to other services as Facebook or Linkedin would be highly beneficial. Therefore, we invested a lot of time in designing this feature, which is located on your homepage. The center of it is the status update, which allows you to share news, links, publications, and more with your ResearchGATE network and gives you the option to share with other networks such as Facebook and FriendFeed.

Homepage Design

We've also updated the layout of your homepage. Now you can also see the activity of your network such as when someone joins a group you are a member of, or if someone comments on one of your posts. Group discussions are an important part of ResearchGATE and they have their own tab within this new feature. Clicking on the discussion tab gives you a fast and easy overview of current discussions in the groups you are a member of.


Boston, Germany – April 20, 2010 – ResearchGATE, the largest social network for scientists and researchers, today introduced a series of new features to make it easier for scientists to share, stay connected and learn from each other online. Users of ResearchGATE can now enable micoblogging on their profile to keep their connections up to date on their latest work and subscribe to updates from other scientists in their network. Microblogging feeds from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can be consolidated on ResearchGATE to give users a holistic view. Members can also effortlessly share documents, data or experiment information so that scientists can work smarter together and learn from previous experiments. “The key to making information accessible to the scientists that need it is making it easy for other scientists to publish that information. This way experiments, data and measurements can finally cease to be repeated hundreds of times around the globe and we can make greater strides in new discoveries,” said Ijad Madisch, co-founder and CEO of ResearchGATE.  

Ijad Madisch, CEO and Co-Founder of ResearchGATE will be part of a panel discussion at The German Conference at Harvard on “Where is the Next Harvard? Future Excellence in Scientific Research,” Saturday, February 20, 2010, from 1:30pm to 3pm ET at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA.

Participants on the panel are: Matthias Kleiner, President of the "Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft" (DFG), Germany's leading source of funding for scientific research, Ursula Gather, President TU Dortmund University and Philip G. Altbach, Director of the Center for International Higher Education (CIHE), Boston College

The conference will focus on how the global competition between universities and research institutions on the turf of scientific research has increased in the last couple of years. The war of talents became a war of institutions. The economic crisis affected universities around the globe, particularly in the United States, with endowments shrunk and engagements postponed. Ijad will discuss his thoughts on what the university of the future should look like. What role will research institutions play? Where will the next Harvard be? In China, India, Germany, or in Cambridge, MA?

For more information please visit the German Conference at Harvard website