The Research Interest Score (RI Score) is a convenient way to help you track the impact of your research within the scientific community.
The score combines reads by unique ResearchGate members, recommendations on ResearchGate, and citations (excl. self-citations).
We believe that citations are not the only indicator of a researcher's impact – while they are the longest-standing measure, it can take months or even years before you start receiving citations after a paper is published. At the same time, researchers are reading and learning from each other’s work on ResearchGate every day. These interactions can impact future research, but not all of them end in citations. That’s why using citations alone in measuring impact can underrepresent the full impact of a piece of research. By combining reads, recommendations, and citations, we believe that the Research Interest Score offers a holistic indicator of the impact of a person's research.
On your own profile, you can see your score, along with a breakdown of the metrics that are used to calculate it. You'll also be able to compare yourself to your peers by seeing your percentile rankings.
When you look at someone else's profile you can see their Research Interest Score too, helping you understand the impact of their research.
How the Research Interest Score is calculated
We built the Research Interest Score to be intuitive and transparent so that researchers can quickly understand and use it.
The score focuses on individual research items and researchers' interactions with them. This means that you can assess the impact of an individual research item using its Research Interest Score. In addition, a researcher's Research Interest Score is simply the sum of all the Research Interest Scores for all of the research items on their profile.
When a ResearchGate member reads a research item on ResearchGate, recommends it, or cites it, that item's Research Interest Score goes up. It's that simple.
The Research Interest Score uses a system for weighting the different types of interactions:
- An other read* has a weighting of 0.05.
- A full-text read* has a weighting of 0.15.
- A recommendation has a weighting of 0.25.
- A citation has a weighting of 0.5.
*An 'other read' is counted when a ResearchGate member views a publication summary or clicks on a figure. A 'full-text read' is counted when a ResearchGate member views or downloads the full-text. Learn more about how we count reads.
What the Research Interest Score doesn't include
To make the Research Interest Score meaningful to our members, we exclude certain types of data:
- Self-citations and reads by authors
Self-citing — when an author of a citing publication overlaps with the authors of a cited publication — is a valid practice that represents how science builds upon itself. However, the Research Interest Score is designed to look at how others interact with your research. To help focus on the impact that your research has in your field and on your peers, we, therefore, exclude self-citations from our calculations. For the same reason, a read also isn't counted when you or one of your co-authors access your own publication.
- Reads by people who are not ResearchGate members
By only measuring interest from researchers who are logged in to ResearchGate we can try to ensure that the score remains meaningful and that the people reading and learning from your work are from within the scientific community. This also allows us to show you the people behind the metrics, a key part of understanding how your work is being received.
- Multiple reads and recommendations by a researcher in a single week
A researcher interacting multiple times with the same research within a short period of time doesn't represent an increase in interest but leaves the score more open to abuse.
- Interactions from bots, crawlers, and other automated systems
Our bot detection system is constantly monitoring abnormalities so that we can react quickly to any irrelevant or fraudulent activity. You can also send feedback to our Community Support team if you suspect any unusual activity in your stats.