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Reads is a simple metric to show you exactly how often your work and other people’s publications are accessed online, in real time.

You can find out how many reads your publications on ResearchGate are getting each week, which of your publications are getting the most reads, and which institutions and countries your reads are coming from.

The reads breakdown shows you how people are reading your work, and if the researcher permits it, you'll also be able to see exactly who has read your work. This offers a unique opportunity to connect with peers who are interested in your research. 

How are reads calculated?

A read is counted when somebody:

• Reads the full-text or summary of any type of research (e.g., journal article, conference paper, dataset) on ResearchGate
• Downloads a file hosted on ResearchGate, including direct downloads from Google Scholar and other search engines

Reads are counted 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 access one of your own publications. It is also not counted when your work is accessed by an artificial traffic source.

We're continuously working on improving our ability to detect different sources of artificial traffic to make sure we show you accurate metrics. Please get in touch if you notice anything unusual with your stats.

What is the reads breakdown?

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The interactive pie chart on your stats page under the section titled Reads breakdown gives you a simple way to see how people are reading your work. There are five types of reads that are presented in the reads breakdown: On-page reads, Summary reads, Private shares, File downloads, and Figure reads. You can hover your mouse over each of the sections on the pie chart to see more details for each type of read.

What are the types of reads in the reads breakdown exactly? 

There are five kinds of reads that can be displayed in the reads breakdown.

On-page reads are counted when a researcher reads a publication on its ResearchGate page.

Summary reads are counted when a publication that is accessed only has metadata available, such as the title, abstract, and list of authors.

Private shares are counted when a researcher downloads a publication after receiving it via the Request full-text button on ResearchGate.

File downloads includes cases when a researcher downloads a publication hosted on ResearchGate, such as from a publication's ResearchGate page, or from a scholarly search engine such as Google Scholar.

Figure reads are counted someone reads a publication's figures directly from its ResearchGate page or directly from the home feed. 

We're continuously working on improving our ability to detect different sources of artificial traffic to make sure we show you accurate metrics. Please get in touch if you notice anything unusual with your stats.

Why have my stats decreased?

Your stats, and those of others have decreased because we’ve been working extensively to give you a more accurate picture of the attention your research is getting online.

As part of this, we’ve removed 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 access one of your own publications.

We're continuously working on detecting unusual patterns of activity that could skew your stats. Please get back in touch if you notice anything unusual — we appreciate your feedback.

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Profile views show you how many people are visiting your ResearchGate profile. They also show you who’s been viewing your profile based on their country and research institution.

Researchers can decide whether they want to download privately or publicly. They can update this in their Privacy settings, in the Reader data section, by selecting the box next to the following information: Allow other researchers to see that I've downloaded their publications. If researchers untick this box, this means that they also won't be able to see which researchers have downloaded their publications. If a researcher who reads your publication has chosen not to make his reads public, you will only see the institution of the researcher.

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On your stats page you can find all the citations of your work over time, and choose whether you want to view a daily or weekly breakdown

What citation information can I find on my profile?

You can find out how many citations your publications on ResearchGate are getting, where they were cited, and by whom. Where possible, you will also be able to see exactly what was said about your research and view the citation in context in the publication where it was cited. This information can be found either on your Stats tab under Citations, or on your Contributions tab under Citations.

Why are some of my citations not shown?

While citations using standard citation styles are usually extracted accurately on ResearchGate, there are some instances where they cannot be extracted – for example, for full-text PDFs that have been created from scanned hard copies. PDF as a format is not particularly standard, and therefore creating algorithms to extract this information is an ongoing process, with varying levels of success. Please also note that citations that do not have complete metadata (publication date, journal, abstract) may not be included in your citation counts, as this is an important piece of information when it comes to matching citations to publications correctly. Additionally, if the citing paper is not on ResearchGate, this can also hinder our efforts to add the citation. If the publication is not on ResearchGate, you can add it, even if you didn't author it. Make sure you remove your name from the author list during creation, and add all of the metadata you have for the publication correctly. Our citation data is regularly updated and we are working hard to improve how we extract and match citations, so if you notice some are missing, they may be added soon.

Why did my citation count decrease?

There are two possible reasons why your citation count or h-index decreased. It is possible that you were cited by a publication which was duplicated in our system. We then merged the duplicates which resulted in the loss of a citation. Alternatively, an author of a publication which cited you may have removed their publication from our database entirely. Since there are over a billion citations in our database, we cannot further investigate the cause of any particular fluctuation in citation count or h-index.