Reads is a simple metric designed to show you exactly how often research is being accessed on ResearchGate.
Since it can take a long time before your research gets cited, reads are a great way to see early interest in your work — from both ResearchGate members and non-members.
Your Stats tab is where you can find out how many reads your research items are getting. You can also see information about your readers by country, institution, seniority, and discipline.
Depending on your profile visibility settings, you can also see some of the profiles of the people who recently read your work, allowing you to connect with people who are interested in your research. (Note: You'll only see readers if you allow others to see when you've read their work and if your reader has done the same.)
How are reads calculated?
We count and display the number of reads for each publication on ResearchGate, each question asked and answer added in Q&A.
For a publication, a ‘read’ is counted each time someone views the publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure linked to the publication (either directly on the publication page or via the home feed), or views or downloads the full-text, if there is one.
To show how engaged viewers are with your research, you will also be able to see the full-text reads metric for your own publications. For publications, a 'full-text read' is counted each time someone views or downloads the full-text.
For questions, a ‘read’ is counted each time someone views the question. A ‘read’ of an answer in Q&A is only counted if someone looks at that particular answer.
To show the full reach of your work, we count reads from both logged in ResearchGate members and logged out readers.
To make sure reads gives you an accurate picture of the attention your research is getting, a read isn't counted when you or one of your co-authors access your own publication, or when you view your own question or answer. It is also not counted when your work is accessed by an artificial traffic source (such as a robot or bot). We're continuously working on improving our ability to detect different sources of artificial traffic to make sure we show you accurate metrics.
How can I see who my readers are?
To see the identities of your readers, you first need to enable your reader visibility settings. Once enabled, others will be able to see when you've read their work and you’ll be able to see the profiles of your readers who also have these settings enabled. To see them:
- Log in to your account https://www.researchgate.net/login
- Visit the Stats tab on your profile and click on the Reads tab
- If you have more than two readers, then under People who read your publications click on View more researchers.
How can I see my readers by publication?
- Log in to your account https://www.researchgate.net/login
- Visit the Stats tab on your profile and click on the Reads tab.
- Under Reader demographics for the last 8 weeks click on View individual publication stats.
Alternatively, you can go to your individual publication pages directly, click on Stats, and scroll down to see your readers (if applicable).
How can I see my reader demographics?
- Log in to your account https://www.researchgate.net/login
- Visit the Stats tab on your profile and click on the Reads tab
- Under Reader demographics for the last 8 weeks click on View all demographics.
What are my read demographics based on?
Your read demographics provide a demographic breakdown of the reads your work has received over the past 8 weeks (when such information is available).
Reads by country and institution are based on the institutional affiliation or location your readers have listed on their ResearchGate profiles.
Reads by discipline are based on the disciplines your readers have added to their ResearchGate profiles. If a reader has two disciplines, they might be counted twice. For example, if one of your readers has Software Engineering and Computer Architecture listed as disciplines on their profile, you might receive one read for Software Engineering and one read for Computer Architecture.
Data relating to your reads by seniority level comes from information your readers have added to their ResearchGate profiles (if they have added such information). In some cases, this data might also be based on inferences we’ve made about your readers’ seniority levels based on other data from their profiles, such as their position, degree, and years since first publication. This additional data helps us make a reasonable guess about what their seniority level might be.
Why have my stats decreased?
There are a few possible reasons why your reads statistics may have decreased. The reads counter on your profile's Stats tab is a sum of the reads of your individual research items, which you can find on your Research tab. If a research item is removed from your Research tab, deleted from ResearchGate, or merged with a duplicate item, the item's reads will also be removed.
Your stats and those of others may have decreased because we’ve been working extensively to give you a more accurate picture of the attention your research is getting on ResearchGate.
As part of this, we remove traffic from artificial sources from our members’ stats. This means that visits by automated programs like crawlers and bots, which remotely load pages and download content to retrieve information, aren’t counted. Reads also aren’t counted when you or one of your co-authors accesses one of your own publications, you view your own question, answer, or figure.
We're continuously working on detecting unusual patterns of activity that could skew your stats.
