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

As one of the many requested features, ResearchGATE now supports COinS (ContextObjects in Spans). COinS is an open and easy to use specification for publishing OpenURL bibliographic metadata in HTML. On web pages, embedded COinS can be read and processed by applications. A COinS section is embedded in each of our publication pages. This means that other bookmarklets can extract and process the information from ResearchGATE’s publication pages.The addition of COinS to ResearchGATE will allow scientists and researchers to access their colleagues journal publications through their own library subscriptions. A growing number of tools including Zotero and LibX are supporting COinS." said Eric Hellmann, editor of the COinS specification.Thanks for your feedback and we are looking forward to your next ideas.

Boston, January 20, 2010. This week ResearchGATE was named one of the top 100 global tech start-ups for 2009 by Red Herring, the prominent international technology media group. The Global award has become one of the most prestigious awards in the industry, as Red Herring editors have consistently identified promising technology companies. Google, Yahoo, Skype, YouTube and eBay are only a few such examples.

Global winners must demonstrate the ability to handle the challenges of internationalization and a global presence. International collaboration stands at the center of ResearchGATE’s mission. A network for scientists, ResearchGATE has expanded to over 200,000 members from 200 countries in less than two years. The platform was launched in May 2008 and is currently based in Boston, MA and Berlin, Germany.

“The ResearchGATE vision of changing science by facilitating international communication and collaboration has started to become reality the Red Herring Global award attests not only to the platform’s growing prominence but also to its potential within the industry,” says ResearchGATE co-founder and CEO Ijad Madisch, an award-winning virologist. Herring’s editorial staff evaluated the companies on both quantitative and qualitative criteria. “Choosing the best out of the previous three years was by no means a small feat,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “After rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed down our list from 1,200 potential companies to 200 finalists.  Trying to get it down to 100 companies was a task upon itself.  The top 100 companies who were chosen should be extremely proud, the competition was difficult.”

"This year was especially difficult", said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. "Despite the global economic situation, there were many great companies producing really innovative and amazing products that we had a difficult time narrowing the pool and selecting the finalists. Now we’re faced with the arduous task of selecting the final 100 winners of the award. We know that this year’s crop will grow into some amazing companies that are sure to go". Finalists for the 2009 edition of the Red Herring Global 100 award are selected from the regional recipients or finalists of the Red Herring 100 awards in 2007, 2008, or 2009 ranging from Asia, Europe, and North America. For the past three years, the award has been given to the top100 global technology companies based upon their technological innovation, management strength, market size, investor record, customer acquisition, and financial health. During the several months leading up to the announcement, hundreds of companies in the telecommunications, security, Web 2.0, software, hardware, biotech, and clean tech industries sent in their submissions to qualify for the award.

The CEOs of the 200 finalists are invited to present their winning strategies at the Red Herring Global Conference in Laguna Niguel, California, January 12-14, 2010. The Top 100 winners will be announced at a special awards ceremony at the event. About Red Herring: Red Herring is a global media company uniting the world's best high-technology innovators, venture investors, and business decision-makers in a variety of forums: a leading innovation magazine, an online daily technology news service, technology newsletters, and major events for technology leaders around the globe. Red Herring provides an insider's view of the global innovation ecosystem, featuring unparalleled insights on the emerging technologies driving the economy.

Today, it is with great pride that the ResearchGATE team announces that it has welcomed the 200,000th researcher to its scientific network.  Thanks for your continuous feedback, which helped us build the largest scientific network that exists today. The 200,000 User is a researcher from Australia, who is currently conducting research in Dietetics and Nutrition. As we’re headed into the new year, the fact that so many researchers and scientists have signed up and started collaborating only shows that online collaboration and social media will lead the way in 2010. As ResearchGATE continues to evolve, we will look forward to innovating science and growing this community together.