ResearchGate is a European commercial social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators. According to a 2014 study by Nature and a 2016 article in Times Higher Education , it is the largest academic social network in terms of active users, although other services have more registered users, and a 2015–2016 survey suggests that almost as many academics have Google Scholar profiles.
93-403: While reading articles does not require registration, people who wish to become site members need to have an email address at a recognized institution or to be manually confirmed as a published researcher in order to sign up for an account. Articles are free to read by visitors, however additional features (such as job postings or advertisements) are accessible only as a paid subscription. Members of
186-445: A social media platform which enables them to be recognised as opinion leaders to shape an information influence to their audience. ' Influencer marketing ' industry gained prominence in 2018, when the photo sharing app Instagram crossed 1 billion users, subsequently with approximately 60,000 google search queries for 'influencer marketing' the same year. Influencer user profiles hold a unique selling point, or public personality that
279-424: A collection of Google websites (like Google Finance , Gmail , Blogger , and YouTube ), partner sites, and mobile sites and apps that show adverts from Google Ads matched to the content on a given page.' These two kinds of advertising networks can be beneficial for each specific goal of the company, or type of company. For example, the search network can benefit a company to reach consumers actively searching for
372-399: A condensed user profile. Universally, all social networking platforms display an individual's profile picture and an “about me” page that allows for self-expression. Influencer user profiles are third party endorsers who shape audience attitudes and decisions through social media content such as photos, blogs and tweets . Social Media Influencers (SMI) often hold a significant following on
465-419: A consumer was frequently searching for plane ticket prices, the targeting system would recognize this and start showing related adverts across unrelated websites, such as airfare deals on Facebook. Its advantage is that it can target individual interests, rather than target groups of people whose interests may vary. When a consumer visits a website, the pages they visit, the amount of time they view each page,
558-486: A customer's user profile and interests to generate a list of recommended items to shop. Recommendation algorithms analyse user demographic data, history, and favourite artists to compile suggestions. The store rapidly adapts to changing user needs and preferences, with generation of real time results required within half of a second. New profiles naturally have limited information for algorithms to analyse, and customer data of each interaction provides valuable information which
651-586: A date of expiry or date of creation to indicate the legitimacy of the document and/or to encourage renewal to maintain accuracy of details. In some countries, it is a requirement to have a valid passport for six months after the planned leave from the country. National identity documents are any documents issued by the official national authority, and are part of a government record. It is used to verify aspects of an individual's personal identity. Government issued documents include birth certificates, drivers licence, marriage certificate, national identity document and
744-544: A different way than individual sites. Since they serve many advertisements across many different sites, they can build up a picture of the likely demographic makeup of internet users. Data from a visit to one website can be sent to many different companies, including Microsoft and Google subsidiaries, Facebook , Yahoo , many traffic-logging sites, and smaller ad firms. This data can sometimes be sent to more than 100 websites and shared with business partners, advertisers, and other third parties for business purposes. The data
837-582: A focus on race, economic status, sex, age, generation, level of education, income level, and employment, or psychographic focused on the consumer values, personality, attitude, opinion, lifestyle , and interests. This focus can also entail behavioral variables, such as browser history , purchase history , and other recent online activities. The process of algorithm targeting eliminates waste. Traditional forms of advertising, including billboards , newspapers, magazines, and radio channels, are progressively becoming replaced by online advertisements. Through
930-415: A foundation on which a usable application is built. The structure and layout of an application such as its menus, features and controls are often derived from user's selected settings and preferences. The origin of digital user profiles in computer systems was first initiated by Windows NT that held user settings and information in a separate environment variable named %USERPROFILE% and held the framework to
1023-470: A market survey, influencer marketing through social media profiles yields a return 11 times higher than traditional marketing, as they are more capable of communicating to a niche segment. Most popular influencers include sport starts such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Hollywood personalities such as Dwayne Johnson and Kylie Jenner each with over 200 million followers respectively. Online shopping or Ecommerce websites such as Amazon use information from
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#17330935733991116-762: A meaningful self-presentation, which grants individual more control over of the identity they wish to present by displaying the most meaningful attributes. A personal user profile is a key aspect of an individual's social networking experience, around which his/her public identity is built. A user profile can be of any format if it contains information, settings and/or characteristics specific to an individual. Most popular user profiles include those on photo and video sharing websites such as Facebook and Instagram, accounts on operating systems, such as those on Windows and MacOS and physical documents such as passports and driving licenses. Effectively structured user profiles on social media channels such as Instagram and Facebook offer
1209-439: A means of delivering targeted advertising by monitoring the actions of a user on the website. For this purpose, the cookies used are called tracking cookies . An ad network company such as Google uses cookies to deliver advertisements adjusted to the interests of the user, control the number of times that the user sees an ad, and "measure" whether they are advertising the specific product to the customer's preferences. This data
1302-620: A member of the board and participated in the decision to move to Berlin. The website began with few features, and developed based on input from scientists. From 2009 to 2011, the number of users of the site grew from 25,000 to more than 1 million. A second round of funding led by Peter Thiel 's Founders Fund was announced in February 2012. On June 4, 2013, it closed Series C financing arrangements for $ 35M from investors including Bill Gates . The company grew from 12 employees in 2011 to 120 in 2014. As of 2016, it had about 300 employees, including
1395-659: A member posts a question, it is fielded to others that have identified on their user profile that they have a relevant expertise. It also has private chat rooms where users can share data, edit shared documents, or discuss confidential topics. The site also features a research-focused job board . As of 2020, it has more than 17 million users, with its largest user-bases coming from Europe and North America. Most of ResearchGate's users are involved in medicine or biology, though it also has participants from engineering, law, computer science, agricultural sciences, and psychology, among others. ResearchGate published an author-level metric in
1488-503: A more specific changing environment. The most straightforward method of targeting is content/contextual targeting. This is when advertisers put ads in a specific place, based on the relative content present. Another name used is content-oriented advertising, as it corresponds to the context being consumed. This targeting method can be used across different mediums, for example in an article online, purchasing homes would have an advert associated with this context, like an insurance ad. This
1581-690: A part of the Google display network , or when searching for keywords related to a product or service on the Google search engine. Dynamic remarketing can improve targeted advertising as the ads can include the products or services that the consumers have previously viewed on the advertisers' websites within the ads. Google Ads includes different platforms. The Search Network displays the ads on ' Google Search , other Google sites such as Maps and Shopping, and hundreds of non-Google search partner websites that show ads matched to search results'. 'The Display Network includes
1674-413: A particular product or service. Other ways advertising campaigns can target the user is to use browser history and search history. For example, if the user types promotional pens into a search engine such as Google, ads for promotional pens will appear at the top of the page above the organic listings. These ads will be geo-targeted to the area of the user's IP address, showing the product or service in
1767-608: A profile on ResearchGate in the past year, and 35% of the survey participants were invited by email. A 2016 article in Times Higher Education reported that in a global survey of 20,670 people who use academic social networking sites, ResearchGate was the dominant network and was twice as popular as others: 61 percent of respondents who had published at least one paper had a ResearchGate profile. Another study reported that "relatively few academics appear to post questions and answers", but instead use it only as an "online CV". In
1860-417: A rules-based approach, allowing administrators to set the content and offers shown to those with particular traits. According to research behavioral targeting provides little benefit at a huge privacy cost — when targeting for gender, the targeted guess is 42% accurate, which is less than a random guess. When targeting for gender and age the accuracy is 24%. Advertising networks use behavioral targeting in
1953-525: A sales staff of 100. ResearchGate's competitors include Academia.edu , Google Scholar , and Mendeley , as well as new competitors that emerged in the last decade like Semantic Scholar . In 2016, Academia.edu reportedly had more registered users (about 34 million versus 11 million) and higher web traffic, but ResearchGate was substantially larger in terms of active usage by researchers. The fact that ResearchGate restricts its user accounts to people at recognized institutions and published researchers may explain
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#17330935733992046-416: A social security card. The format of identity documents varies with each individual country. The Cambridge Analytica Scandal , surfaced in 2018, raised global concerns over the privacy and the psychographic profiling algorithms that can be derived from user profiles. In 2013, Aleksandr Kogan of Cambridge Analytica developed an application " thisisyourdigitallife ", which operated as a personality quiz, with
2139-428: A specialist content behavioral platform or by bespoke software development. Most platforms identify visitors by assigning a unique ID cookie to every visitor to the site thereby allowing them to be tracked throughout their web journey, the platform then makes a rules-based decision about what content to serve. Self-learning onsite behavioral targeting systems will monitor visitor response to site content and learn what
2232-517: A survey with 160 respondents and reported that out of those respondents using social networking "for academic purposes", Facebook and ResearchGate were the most popular at the University of Delhi , but also "a majority of respondents said using SNSs [Social Networking Sites] may be a waste of time". Although ResearchGate is used internationally, its uptake—as of 2014—is uneven, with Brazil having particularly many users and China having few when compared to
2325-411: A technique for increasing the relevance of product offers and promotions on a visitor by visitor basis. More recently, companies outside this traditional e-commerce marketplace have started to experiment with these emerging technologies. The typical approach to this starts by using web analytics or behavioral analytics to breakdown the range of all visitors into several discrete channels. Each channel
2418-452: A temporary account to complete work and research. Physical user profiles or legal documents such as passport and driving license are widely accepted as an official government record of an individual's details. Much like digital user profiles, these documents outline primary characteristics of an individual such as their full legal name, birthdate, address portrait picture and a date of expiry. In recent history, many user profiles include
2511-466: A user's profile root. Consequently, operating systems such as MacOS further accelerated prominence of user profiles in Mac OS X 10.0. Iterations since have been made with each operating system release with the aim to maximise user friendliness with the system. Features such as keyboard layouts, time zones, measurement units, synchronisation of different services and privacy preferences are made available during
2604-440: A user. Identified on ResearchGate as "Research Ben", he had been a frequent user of ResearchGate, publishing over 80 papers of interest with the vast majority dealing with studies around child pornography and pedophiles . ResearchGate has been criticized for emailing unsolicited invitations to the coauthors of its users. These emails were written as if they were personally sent by the user, but were instead sent automatically unless
2697-495: A way for people to form impressions about someone that is predictive or similarly meeting them offline. The condensed format of social media profiles allows for quick filtering of millions of profiles by matching individuals by similar characteristics and interests; information provided upon sign up. A research conducted highlights that only a “thin slice” of information is required to form an impression about an individual online (Stecher and Counts 2008). Online user profiles eliminate
2790-458: Is associated with the user's own software or hardware status. The advertisement is altered depending on the user's available network bandwidth , for example, if a user is on a mobile phone that has a limited connection, the ad delivery system will display a version of the ad that is smaller for a faster data transfer rate. Addressable advertising systems serve ads directly based on demographic, psychographic, or behavioral attributes associated with
2883-410: Is collected using cookies , web beacons and similar technologies, and/or a third-party ad serving software, to automatically collect information about site users and site activity. Some servers even record the page that referred you to them, the websites you visit after them, which ads you see, and which ads you click on. Online advertising uses cookies, a tool used specifically to identify users, as
ResearchGate - Misplaced Pages Continue
2976-970: Is focused on highly targeted advertising based on analysis of the activities of users, saying "Imagine you could click on a microscope mentioned in a paper and buy it", and estimating the spending on science at $ 1 trillion per year under the control of a "relatively small number of people". In November 2015 they acquired additional funding of $ 52.6 million from a range of investors including Goldman Sachs , Benchmark Capital , Wellcome Trust and Bill Gates, but did not announce this until February 2017. Losses increased from €5.4m in 2014 to €6.2m in 2015, but ResearchGate's CEO expressed optimism that they would break even eventually. ResearchGate, Elsevier and American Chemical Society settled their lawsuit on 15 September 2023. As of January 2023, ResearchGate has partnered with Sage to distribute open access content. A 2009 article in BusinessWeek reported that ResearchGate
3069-476: Is known to be vital for language perception , learning , and reasoning providing us with the capacity of putting away, recovering, and preparing quick data. For many people, working memory accessibility is good when they get up toward the beginning of the day, most reduced in mid-evening, and moderate at night. Sociodemographic targeting focuses on the characteristics of consumers. This includes their age, generation, gender, salary, and nationality. The idea
3162-566: Is minimal in online dating contexts (Hancock, Toma and Ellison, 2007). Apps such as Bumble allow users to ‘match’ with other individuals based on their characteristics and selected filters that allow users to narrow the spectrum of search to their preference. Information for a user's profile is voluntarily specified by the user and includes information such as height, interests, photographs, gender or education. The requirement of information varies respective to each platform, and there surrounds little consensus to an appropriate amount of information for
3255-412: Is most effective for scheduling content, it is essential to know when the brain is most effective at retaining memory. Research in chronopsychology has credited that time-of-day impacts diurnal variety in a person's working memory accessibility and has discovered the enactment of inhibitory procedures to build working memory effectiveness during times of low working memory accessibility. Working memory
3348-534: Is most likely to generate a desired conversion event . Some good content for each behavioral trait or pattern is often established using numerous simultaneous multivariate tests . Onsite behavioral targeting requires a relatively high level of traffic before statistical confidence levels can be reached regarding the probability of a particular offer generating a conversion from a user with a set behavioral profile. Some providers have been able to do so by leveraging their large user base, such as Yahoo! . Some providers use
3441-457: Is much debate over the privacy issues present. Search engine marketing uses search engines to reach target audiences. For example, Google 's Remarketing Campaigns are a type of targeted marketing where advertisers use the IP addresses of computers that have visited their websites to remarket their ad specifically to users who have previously been on their website whilst they browse websites that are
3534-460: Is necessary to participate in a social network and thus, despite the "breach of trust" (Zuckerberg, 2018) minimal users left the platform permanently. In the months following Mark Zuckerberg's (founder) congressional hearing regarding the scandal, 74% of users made adjustments to their use of Facebook user profiles and changed their privacy settings. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) legally required Facebook to acquire explicit consent of
3627-547: Is stored as a database linked with each individual profile. User profiles on ecommerce websites also serve to improve sales of sellers as individuals are recommend products that other "customers who bought this item also bought" to widen the selection of the buyer. A study conducted found that user profiles and recommendation algorithms have significant impact on related product sales and overall spending of an individual. A process known as " collaborative filtering " tries to analyse common products of interest for an individual on
3720-406: Is then analyzed and a virtual profile is created to deal with each channel. These profiles can be based around Personas that gives the website operators a starting point in terms of deciding what content, navigation, and layout to show to each of the different personas. When it comes to the practical problem of successfully delivering the profiles correctly this is usually achieved by either using
3813-474: Is to target users specifically and to use this collected data, for example, targeting a male in the age bracket of 18–24. Facebook and other social media platforms use this form of targeting by showing advertisements relevant to the user's demographic on their account, this can show up in the forms of banner ads , mobile ads, or commercial videos. This type of advertising involves targeting different users based on their geographic location. IP addresses can signal
ResearchGate - Misplaced Pages Continue
3906-565: Is unique and charismatic to the needs and wants of their target audience. SMI profiles advertise product information, latest promotions and regularly engage with their followers to maintain their online persona. Messages endorsed by social media influencers are often perceived as reliable and compelling, as a study conducted found 82% of followers were more inclined to follow the suggestions of their favorite influencer. This allows advertisers to leverage online user profiles and their audience rapport to target younger and niche audiences. According to
3999-410: Is usually achieved through an ad matching system that analyses the contents on a page or finds keywords and presents a relevant advert, sometimes through pop-ups. Sometimes the ad matching system can fail, as it can neglect to tell the difference between positive and negative correlations. This can result in placing contradictory adverts, which are not appropriate to the content. Technical targeting
4092-578: The Association for Information Systems in 2014 found that a dormant account on ResearchGate, using default settings, generated 297 invitations to 38 people over a 16-month period, and that the user profile was automatically attributed to more than 430 publications. Furthermore, journalists and researchers found that the RG score , calculated by ResearchGate via a proprietary algorithm, can reach high values under questionable circumstances. Several studies have looked at
4185-637: The Cambridge Analytica Scandal 2018 , which fuelled a lack of trust for the service and its ability to protect user information. Some reasons for intentional distancing was time-waste, reducing distraction, privacy concerns, seeking new relationships and coping with lost relationships. The movement away from Facebook is less of a one time gush, but a more steady trickle over the course. Some users adapted by deactivating their profiles (which can be reactivated later), others permanently and unretrievably deleting their accounts. For many users, deactivating
4278-467: The International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM) sent a letter to ResearchGate threatening legal action against them for copyright infringement and demanding that they alter their handling of uploaded articles to include pre-release checking for copyright violations and "Specifically, [for ResearchGate to] end its extraction of content from hosted articles and
4371-571: The 21st century, passports have now become a highly sought-after commodity as it is widely accepted as a source of verifying an individual's identity under the legal system. With the advent of digital revolution and social media websites, user profiles have transitioned to an organised group of data describing the interaction between a user and a system. Social media sites like Instagram allow individuals to create profiles that are representative of their desired personality and image. Filling all fields of profile information may not be necessary to create
4464-510: The RG score, for which details about how it is calculated are not published. These studies concluded that the RG score was "intransparent and irreproducible", criticized the way it incorporates the journal impact factor into the user score, and suggested that it should "not be considered in the evaluation of academics". The results were confirmed in a second "response" study, which also found the score to depend mostly on journal impact factors. The RG score
4557-745: The action was issued by a group called Coalition for Responsible Sharing, and the statement was signed by the American Chemical Society , Brill Publishers , Elsevier , Wiley , and Wolters Kluwer . Subsequently, Coalition for Responsible Sharing (CfRS) reported that "ResearchGate has removed from public view a significant number of copyrighted articles it is hosting on its site". CfRS also confirmed that "not all violations have been addressed" and as such, takedown notices have been issued. ResearchGate has managed to achieve an agreement on article uploading with three other major publishers, Springer Nature , Cambridge University Press and Thieme . Under
4650-470: The advertisements of certain products or services. For example, Facebook collects massive amounts of user data from surveillance infrastructure on its platforms. Information such as a user's likes, view history, and geographic location is leveraged to micro-target consumers with personalized products. Paid advertising on Facebook works by helping businesses to reach potential customers by creating targeted campaigns. Social media also creates profiles of
4743-813: The agreement, the publishers will be notified when their articles are uploaded but will not be able to premoderate uploads. User profile A user profile is a collection of settings and information associated with a user. It contains critical information that is used to identify an individual, such as their name, age, portrait photograph and individual characteristics such as knowledge or expertise. User profiles are most commonly present on social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn ; and serve as voluntary digital identity of an individual, highlighting their key features and traits. In personal computing and operating systems , user profiles serve to categorise files, settings, and documents by individual user environments, known as ‘accounts’, allowing
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#17330935733994836-403: The articles listed on the site that were written to appear as if the email messages were sent by the other coauthors of the articles (a practice the site said it had discontinued as of November 2016) and for automatically generating apparent profiles for non-users who have sometimes felt misrepresented by them. A study found that over half of the uploaded papers appear to infringe copyright, because
4929-469: The authors uploaded the publisher's version . The New York Times described the site as a mashup of Facebook , Twitter , and LinkedIn . Site members may follow a research interest, in addition to following other individual members. It has a blogging feature for users to write short reviews on peer-reviewed articles. ResearchGate indexes self-published information on user profiles to suggest members to connect with others who have similar interests. When
5022-409: The basis of implied interest, or contextual advertising . Companies have technology that allows them to gather information about web users. By tracking and monitoring what websites users visit, internet service providers can directly show ads that are relative to the consumer's preferences . Most of today's websites are using these targeting technologies to track users' internet behavior and there
5115-414: The basis of views expressed by other similar behaving profiles. Features such as product ratings, seller ratings and comments allow individual user profiles to contribute to recommendation algorithms, eliminate adverse selection and contribute to shaping an online marketplace adhering to Amazons zero tolerance policy for misleading products. Modern software and applications account for user profiles as
5208-418: The complexity of interaction that is present in ‘face-to-face’ meetings such as behavioural, facial, and environmental information, resulting in increased predictiveness of user personality. Dating apps and websites solely rely on an individual's user profile and the information provided to form interactions and communication with others on the platform. Despite having control over presented information, lying
5301-472: The concern of providing entire access of your account to other individuals. On MacOS , guest profiles don't require a password, however are completely controlled by parental controls on an administrative account. Features such as automatic data & history deletion after a session is closed, allow guest accounts to save disk space once a user logs off. Guest accounts are most popularly used in public services such as libraries where individuals can request for
5394-928: The consumer and only needs to look at one place, the user's profile, to find all interests and 'likes'. E.g. Facebook lets advertisers target using broad characteristics like gender, age, and location. Furthermore, they allow more narrow targeting based on demographics, behavior, and interests (see a comprehensive list of Facebook's different types of targeting options ). Advertisements can be targeted to specific consumers watching digital cable , Smart TVs , or over-the-top video . Targeting can be done according to age, gender, location, or personal interests in films, etc. Cable box addresses can be cross-referenced with information from data brokers like Acxiom , Equifax , and Experian , including information about marriage, education, criminal record, and credit history. Political campaigns may also match against public records such as party affiliation and which elections and party primaries
5487-420: The consumer(s) exposed to the ad. These systems are always digital and must be addressable in that the endpoint that serves the ad ( set-top box , website, or digital sign) must be capable of rendering an ad independently of any other endpoints based on consumer attributes specific to that endpoint at the time the ad is served. Addressable advertising systems, therefore, must use consumer traits associated with
5580-861: The context of the big deal cancellations by several library systems in the world, the wide usage of ResearchGate was credited as one of the factors which reduced the apparent value of the subscriptions to toll access resources. Data analysis tools like Unpaywall Journals , used by libraries to calculate the real costs and value of their options before such decisions, allow to separate ResearchGate from open archives like institutional repositories , which are considered more stable. ResearchGate's decision to not remove convicted sex offenders from its social networking site has been criticized by Canadian authorities. Many researchers world-wide deleted their account in protest as they refused to remove convicted child pornographer and registered sex offender in Canada , Ben Levin as
5673-419: The device (mobile apps like Uber ) that allow access to the location information. This type of targeted advertising focuses on localizing content, for example, a user could be prompted with options of activities in the area, for example, places to eat, nearby shops, etc. Although producing advertising off consumer location-based services can improve the effectiveness of delivering ads, it can raise issues with
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#17330935733995766-406: The disparity in active usage, as a high percentage of the accounts on Academia.edu are lapsed or inactive. In a 2015–2016 survey of academic profile tools, about as many respondents have ResearchGate profiles and Google Scholar profiles, but almost twice as many respondents use Google Scholar for search than use ResearchGate for accessing publications. Madisch has said the company's business strategy
5859-409: The emergence of new online channels, the usefulness of targeted advertising is increasing because companies aim to minimize wasted advertising. Most targeted new media advertising currently uses second-order proxies for targets, such as tracking online or mobile web activities of consumers, associating historical web page consumer demographics with new consumer web page access, using a search word as
5952-547: The endpoints as the basis for selecting and serving ads. According to the Journal of Marketing , more than 1.8 billion clients spent a minimum of 118 minutes daily- via web-based networking media in 2016. Nearly 77% of these clients interact with the content through likes, commenting, and clicking on links related to content. With this astounding buyer trend, advertisers need to choose the right time to schedule content, to maximize advertising efficiency. To determine what time of day
6045-417: The file was in fact not uploaded to ResearchGate. ResearchGate has been criticized for failing to provide safeguards against "the dark side of academic writing", including such phenomena as fake publishers, "ghost journals", publishers with "predatory" publication fees , and fake impact ratings. It has also been criticized for copyright infringement of published works. In September 2017, lawyers representing
6138-464: The form of an "RG Score" since 2012. RG score is not a citation impact measure. RG Scores have been reported to be correlated with existing author-level metrics, but have also been criticized as having questionable reliability and an unknown calculation methodology. In March 2022 ResearchGate announced they would remove the RG Score after July 2022. ResearchGate does not charge fees for putting content on
6231-571: The idea of their online behavior being tracked and used for advertising purposes. Striking a balance between personalization and privacy is crucial. Behavioral targeting may also be applied to any online property on the premise that it either improves the visitor experience or benefits the online property, typically through increased conversion rates or increased spending levels. The early adopters of this technology/philosophy were editorial sites such as HotWired, online advertising with leading online ad servers, retail or another e-commerce website as
6324-424: The individual voting decisions in the 2016 presidential election . For many users it was unsettling that social media was being used to influence public opinion, leading to #deletefacebook campaigns on Twitter as a backlash to the scandal and Facebook's inability to guard privacy invasions. However, a research conducted on undergraduate students revealed many users believe that an exchange of personal information
6417-475: The key caveat of connecting to an individual's Facebook user profile to operate. Many news sources documented Cambridge Analytica's exploitation of the Facebook data algorithm, where users not only gave the app permissions to access their "likes", but also information about their contacts and friends. The amassed data approximating 87 million Facebook users was harvested and exploited legally, to predict and influence
6510-407: The links they click on, the searches they make, and the things that they interact with, allow sites to collect that data, and other factors, to create a ' profile ' that links to that visitor's web browser. As a result, site publishers can use this data to create defined audience segments based on visitors who have similar profiles. When visitors return to a specific site or a network of sites using
6603-401: The local area or surrounding regions. The higher ad position is often rewarded to the ad having a higher quality score. The ad quality is affected by the 5 components of the quality score: When ranked based on these criteria, it will affect the advertiser by improving ad auction eligibility, the actual cost per click (CPC), ad position, and ad position bid estimates; to summarise, the better
6696-439: The location of a user and can usually transfer the location through ZIP codes. Locations are then stored for users in static profiles, thus advertisers can easily target these individuals based on their geographic location. A location-based service (LBS) is a mobile information service that allows spatial and temporal data transmission and can be used to an advertiser's advantage. This data can be harnessed from applications on
6789-414: The modification of any hosted content, including any and all metadata. It would also mean an end to Researchgate's own copying and downloading of published journal article content and the creation of internal databases of articles." This was followed by an announcement that takedown requests are to be issued to ResearchGate for copyright infringement relating to millions of articles. A statement supporting
6882-496: The number of publishing researchers. In a 2014 study by Nature , 88 percent of the responding scientists and engineers said that they were aware of ResearchGate and would use it when "contacted", but less than 10% said they would use it to actively discuss research with 40% instead preferring to use Twitter when discussing research. ResearchGate was visited regularly by half of those surveyed by Nature , coming second to Google Scholar . 29 percent of regular visitors had signed up for
6975-440: The operating system to be more friendly and catered to the user. Physical user profiles serve as identity documents such as passports, driving licenses and legal documents that are used to identify an individual under the legal system. A user profile can also be considered as the computer representation of a user model . A user model is a (data) structure that is used to capture certain characteristics about an individual user, and
7068-505: The process of obtaining the user profile is called user modeling or profiling . The origin of user profiles can be traced to the origin of the passport , an identity document (ID) made mandatory in 1920, after World War I following negotiations at the League of Nations. The passport served as an official government record of an individual. Consequently, Immigration Act of 1924 was established to identify an individual's country of origin. In
7161-495: The quality score, the better ad position, and lower costs. Google uses its display network to track what users are looking at and to gather information about them. When a user goes to a website that uses the Google display network, it will send a cookie to Google, showing information on the user, what they have searched, where they are from, found by the IP address, and then builds a profile around them, allowing Google to easily target ads to
7254-492: The same web browser, those profiles can be used to allow marketers and advertisers to position their online ads and messaging in front of those visitors who exhibit a greater level of interest and intent for the products and services being offered. Behavioral targeting has emerged as one of the main technologies used to increase the efficiency and profits of digital marketing and advertisements, as media providers can provide individual users with highly relevant advertisements. On
7347-569: The setup of a user account on the computer Administrator user profiles have complete access to the system and its permissions. It is often the first user profile on a system by design, and is what allows other accounts to be created. However, since the administrator account has no restrictions, they are highly vulnerable to malware and viruses, with potential to impact all other accounts. Guest accounts allow other people access to your system with limited functionality and restrictions on modifying apps, settings and documents. Guest user accounts solve
7440-489: The site and does not require peer review . ResearchGate was founded in 2008 by virologist Ijad Madisch , who remains the company's CEO, with physician Sören Hofmayer, and computer scientist Horst Fickenscher. It started in Boston, Massachusetts , and moved to Berlin, Germany , shortly afterwards. The company's first round of funding, in 2010, was led by the venture capital firm Benchmark . Benchmark partner Matt Cohler became
7533-437: The site each have a user profile and can upload research output including papers, data, chapters, negative results, patents, research proposals, methods, presentations, and software source code. Users may also follow the activities of other users and engage in discussions with them. Users are also able to block interactions with other users. The site has been criticized for sending unsolicited email invitations to coauthors of
7626-493: The site, and who feel that the pages misrepresent them – especially when they discover that ResearchGate will not take down the pages when asked." ResearchGate uses a crawler to find PDF versions of articles on the homepages of authors and publishers. These are then presented as if they had been uploaded to the web site by the author: the PDF will be displayed embedded in a frame, and only the button label "External Download" indicates that
7719-470: The theory that properly targeted ads and messaging will fetch more consumer interest, publishers can charge a premium for behaviorally targeted ads and marketers can achieve. Behavioral marketing can be used on its own or in conjunction with other forms of targeting. Many practitioners also refer to this process as "audience targeting". While behavioral targeting can enhance ad effectiveness, it also raises privacy concerns. Users may feel uncomfortable with
7812-477: The user opted out , which caused some researchers to boycott the service and contributes to the negative view of ResearchGate in the scientific community. As of November 2016, the site appears to have discontinued this practice. The TechCrunch moderator Mike Butcher accused ResearchGate of having scraped competitors' websites for email addresses to spam, which the ResearchGate CEO denied. A study published by
7905-402: The user in use of their data, alongside disclosing appropriate information about the third party identity. Social media dissatisfaction can arise from challenges relating to misinformation, privacy and anti-social behaviours . 'Facebooklessness' a term coined by Ongun & Güder, 2013, considers the intentional distancing and isolation from Facebook. The #deletefacebook movement arose after
7998-400: The user more specifically. For example, if a user goes onto promotional companies' websites often, that sell promotional pens, Google will gather data from the user such as age, gender, location, and other demographic information as well as information on the websites visited, the user will then be put into a category of promotional products, allowing Google to easily display ads on websites
8091-444: The user visits relating to promotional products. Social media targeting is a form of targeted advertising, that uses general targeting attributes such as geotargeting , behavioral targeting, and socio-psychographic targeting, and gathers the information that consumers have provided on each social media platform. According to the media users' view history, customers who are interested in the criteria will be automatically targeted by
8184-416: The user's privacy. Behavioral targeting is centered around the activity/actions of users and is more easily achieved on web pages. Information from browsing websites can be collected from data mining , which finds patterns in users' search history. Advertisers using this method believe it produces ads that will be more relevant to users, thus leading consumers to be more likely influenced by them. If
8277-403: The view has voted in. Since the early 2000s, advertising has been pervasive online and more recently in the mobile setting. Targeted advertising based on mobile devices allows more information about the consumer to be transmitted, not just their interests, but their information about their location and time. This allows advertisers to produce advertisements that could cater to their schedule and
8370-720: Was a "potentially powerful link" in promoting innovation in developing countries by connecting scientists from those nations with their peers in industrialized nations. It said the website had become popular largely due to its ease of use . It also said that ResearchGate had been involved in several notable cross-country collaborations between scientists that led to substantive developments. Academic reception of ResearchGate remains generally positive, as recent reviews of extant literature show an accepting audience with broad coverage of concepts. A 2012 paper published in The International Information & Library Review conducted
8463-440: Was a reactionary and a temporary response to the scandal, as social needs and constant connectedness with relationships introduced imperatives to stay. Targeted advertising Targeted advertising is a form of advertising , including online advertising , that is directed towards an audience with certain traits, based on the product or person the advertiser is promoting. These traits can either be demographic with
8556-439: Was found to be correlated with different university rankings, the correlation in between these rankings themselves was higher. Nature also reported that "Some of the apparent profiles on the site are not owned by real people, but are created automatically – and incompletely – by scraping details of people's affiliations, publication records and PDFs, if available, from around the web. That annoys researchers who do not want to be on
8649-401: Was found to be negatively correlated with network centrality, i.e., that users that are the most active (and thus central to the network) on ResearchGate usually do not have high RG scores. It was also found to be strongly positively correlated with Quacquarelli Symonds university rankings at the institutional level, but only weakly with Elsevier SciVal rankings of individual authors. While it
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