More connective tissue may make academia more efficient
GIVEN journalists' penchant for sticking the suffix “gate” onto anything they think smells of conspiracy, a public-relations consultant might have suggested a different name. But ResearchGate, a small firm based in Berlin, is immune to such trivia. It is ambitious, too—aiming to do for the academic world what Mark Zuckerberg did for the world in general, by creating a social network for scientists. And it is successful. About 1.4m researchers have signed up already, and that number is growing by 50,000 a month.
Non-scientists might be surprised that such a network is needed. After all, the internet was originally created mainly by academics for academics and Mr Zuckerberg's invention, Facebook, got its start on college campuses. But though the internet has speeded things up, it has not fundamentally changed how researchers are connected. Academic communities are still pretty fragmented, frequently making it hard for scientists to find others doing similar research. And results often are not shared across disciplines.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Professor Facebook”
From the February 11th 2012 edition
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