Research Interest Score

The Research Interest Score (RI Score) is a valuable tool designed to help you track the impact of your research within the scientific community. It offers a comprehensive view by combining several key indicators: reads by unique ResearchGate members, recommendations on ResearchGate, and citations (excluding self-citations).

We recognize that citations, while a long-standing measure, can take considerable time to accrue after publication. Meanwhile, researchers are constantly engaging with and learning from each other's work on ResearchGate, interactions that significantly contribute to future research, even if they don't always result in immediate citations. Relying solely on citations can therefore underrepresent the full impact of your work. By integrating reads, recommendations, and citations, the RI Score provides a more holistic and immediate indicator of your research's influence.

On your profile, you'll find your personal RI Score, along with a detailed breakdown of the metrics used in its calculation. You can also compare your score to your peers through percentile rankings. When viewing other researchers' profiles, their RI Score can help you quickly understand the impact of their work.

How the Research Interest Score is calculated

Our goal in developing the Research Interest Score was to create an intuitive and transparent metric that researchers can easily understand and utilize.

The score focuses on individual research items and how researchers interact with them. This means you can assess the impact of a single research item using its RI Score. A researcher's overall RI Score is simply the sum of the individual RI Scores for all the research items on their profile.

An item's Research Interest Score increases whenever a ResearchGate member reads it, recommends it, or cites it.

The Research Interest Score uses a weighted system for different types of interactions:

• Other Read*: 0.05

• Full-Text Read*: 0.15

• Recommendation: 0.25

• Citation: 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 ensure the Research Interest Score remains a meaningful and accurate reflection of impact, we exclude certain types of data from its calculation:

• Self-citations and reads by authors: While self-citation is a valid academic practice, the RI Score is designed to highlight how others engage with your research. To maintain this focus on external impact, we exclude self-citations. Similarly, reads by you or your co-authors are not counted.

• Reads by non-ResearchGate members: By exclusively measuring interest from logged-in ResearchGate members, we ensure the score reflects engagement within the scientific community. This also allows us to show you the specific researchers interacting with your work, offering deeper insights into its reception.

• Multiple reads and recommendations by a researcher in a single week: To prevent artificial inflation and potential misuse, a researcher's multiple interactions with the same research within a short timeframe are not counted as an increase in interest.

• Interactions from bots, crawlers, and automated systems: Our sophisticated bot detection system continuously monitors for unusual activity to quickly address any irrelevant or fraudulent interactions. If you suspect any unusual activity in your stats, please feel free to send feedback to our Community Support team.