Wednesday 11 October 2017

ResearchGate starts removing research papers

Inside Higher Ed reports that ResearchGate, a scholarly social media platform used by scholars to share their work, has started taking down large numbers of research papers because of publishers warnings that many of the papers uploaded there are in breach of copyright. ResearchGate provides an easy platform for uploading scholarly papers, but apparently publishers have gone from being irate to threatening legal action. A group called the Coalition for Responsible Sharing posted a statement saying that "ResearchGate’s primary service is taking high-quality content written and published by others and making as many as 7 million copyrighted articles – 40% of its total content – freely available via its for-profit platform...numerous attempts to agree with ResearchGate on amicable solutions... remained unsuccessful." Inside Higher Ed says that the coalition planned to initially issue more than a hundred thousand takedown notices to ResearchGate. It also reported that ACS and Elsevier were suing ResearchGate in its home country of Germany.  Now the Coalition has published an online notice that ResearchGate has removed a significan number of copyrighted articles. 

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