Role of academic social networks in disseminating the scientific production of researchers in biology/medicine: the example of ResearchGate

Over time, academic social networks are more and more used by researchers, especially thanks to the possibilities of sharing articles they offer. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the proportion, the typology (pre-print, post-print author/publisher) and the legality of the full-text publications deposited by researchers on ResearchGate which is widely used by the medical and biological community, using a sample of 1,500 randomly selected articles in PubMed and published between 2013 and 2015. To compare, the access to the full-text of the 1500 articles via PubMed and PubMed Central has been assessed, putting into evidence the important role ResearchGate plays for providing full-texts of articles in biology/medicine. It also puts academic social networks into perspective in relation to open-access repositories and open access.