Research is the foremost important aspect of academia. New knowledge is created by research and it is shared via different avenues. Journal publication is one of them. Scholars select different types of journals and categorize them as high ranking, moderate and low impact journals. Sharing happens in these three categories but many of them seeks for high ranking journals as benchmarking for their publications provided the anticipated impact those journals creates in the literature.
Soon after the publication authors seek more widespread attention other than the desired journal gets the article is published. To satisfy this motive different repositories and networking sites (ResearchGate, Academia, Mendeley and etc.) have emerged. So what authors do is after the publishing they extract the article from the journal and distribute it via networking sites with objective of seeking more attention. Sometimes the author may genuinely having an objective to create an academic impact but very less of them know the ethicality of such an approach. This ethicality arises because once an article published with a journal the sole right remains with the publisher. Having said that, secondary attention seeking attempts like sharing articles via networking sites bring copyright issues. We have seen many academic institutions promote sharing research via networking sites but they rarely address the roots of it.
If an author seeks to publish his/her papers through ResearchGate and etc, he/she should carefully check the version of the article uploaded. These risks can be settled and convinced after reading the copyright/ publishing agreement of the journal. Many journals allow authors to republish articles through networking sites by ways of, the author’s pre-print, the published version or the author’s accepted version. Therefore, we suggest you to read the Copyright Transfer Agreement prior to share it with ResearchGate. At the same time many journals provide open access policies also. If you are unaware of open access policies of a journal, Sherpa Romeo would provide you with facts.
We highly suggest you to upload commercial publisher of PDF versions of articles to ResearhGate only if that article comes under open access policies or it has been permitted by the Copyright Transfer Agreement. If not simply, you committing to academic disputes. We have seen universities promote sharing research via ResearchGate without mentioning the ethics behind it. They emphasize authors will get good academic merits when it comes to their PhD placements and etc, but I wonder if one commits this academic unethical behavior he/she will be blacklisted. Therefore, what is required is to be educated first prior to implementation.
We highly suggest you to upload commercial publisher of PDF versions of articles to ResearhGate only if that article comes under open access policies or it has been permitted by the Copyright Transfer Agreement. If not simply, you committing to academic disputes. We have seen universities promote sharing research via ResearchGate without mentioning the ethics behind it. They emphasize authors will get good academic merits when it comes to their PhD placements and etc, but I wonder if one commits this academic unethical behavior he/she will be blacklisted. Therefore, what is required is to be educated first prior to implementation.