Have you noticed ResearchGate changed its user agreement? Here’s what you need to know:

Since its inception in 2008, ResearchGate has been widely used by scholars in the research community. Currently, there are over 14 million registered members and more than 100 million publications.

This social networking platform has caused significant copyright concerns, especially among publishers and the research library community. In October 2017, Elsevier and the American Chemical Society filed a law suit against ResearchGate for massive copyright infringements. While the parties are negotiating, ResearchGate updated its Terms of Service a week after the filing and its Intellectual Property Policy in January of this year.

The new Terms of Service are much more detailed than the previous version, limiting ResearchGate’s liabilities. Specifically, ResearchGate emphasizes that their service consists of information uploaded by users. ResearchGate does not “preview or review or filter such information,” therefore claiming that they have no idea of possible infringements and are not liable for content that violates others’ rights. Reading together with the added clauses like Liability, Indemnity, Venue, and Arbitration, apparently ResearchGate is improving their protection shields.

If you currently use ResearchGate or other social networking platforms to share your research and scholarship, this is a good reminder of author rights and responsible sharing. Generally, the publishing agreement you signed specifies what rights you retain as an author and what you can share.

For example, IEEE allows authors to choose their publishing options, including copyright being assigned to IEEE or being held by authors through a Creative Commons Attribution License. While Elsevier asks for copyright assignment but allows authors to share preprints with any website or repository at any time.

If you have any questions about copyright, fair use, author rights, and sharing information, please contact Bing Wang, J.D., copyright expert, at bing.wang@gatech.edu.