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Sharing gray academic literature with ResearchGate DOIs: Increased discoverability but inaccurate metadata Cover

Sharing gray academic literature with ResearchGate DOIs: Increased discoverability but inaccurate metadata

Open Access
|Jul 2025

Figures & Tables

Figure 1.

Number of RG-DOIs registered over time. Note: 2023 is incomplete; 184 records appear without the year of registration in the metadata field.
Number of RG-DOIs registered over time. Note: 2023 is incomplete; 184 records appear without the year of registration in the metadata field.

Figure 2.

Number of RG-registered DOIs per document type over time. Note: The year 2023 is incomplete.
Number of RG-registered DOIs per document type over time. Note: The year 2023 is incomplete.

Figure 3.

Number of citations received by RG-registered DOIs per document type.
Number of citations received by RG-registered DOIs per document type.

Number of records with Altmetrics performance per record type and metric_

Record typesTotal%News countReaders countPolicy citations
Null3,7251.3842,690428
Conference Paper3,0832.6282,683100
Technical Report6220.826326178
Book5814.4543655
Thesis4920.6242121
Poster4310.3633210
Presentation3860.3129420
Preprint2860.31219517
Other2750.4521829
Working Paper1901.4310748
Publication851.31527
Code691.52621
Chapter433.00411
Method270.30183
Research Proposal190.10140
Experiment Findings150.10101
Article42.8030
Cover Page11.8001
Patent10.6010
TOTAL10,335 1757,903920

Differences between the registration and publication dates_

Year of RegistrationRG-DOIs with other year of publication%Difference (Avg.)RG-DOIs with same year of publication%Total RG-DOI publications
201462,11465.65.932,63634.494,750
201572,26546.86.382,16453.2154,429
201675,61751.35.771,90048.7147,517
201748,62446.65.355,82253.4104,446
201837,18837.55.362,04362.599,231
201946,37238.25.475,13761.8121,509
202053,98439.35.083,40160.7137,385
202139,70535.25.073,04964.8112,754
202228,57933.24.657,55966.886,138
202314,12140.84.420,47359.234,594
NullN/AN/AN/AN/AN/A181
All478,75043.85.2614,18456.21,092,934

Number of RG-DOI publications according to document type_

Document typeRG-DOI publications%
Null284,98526.1
Poster141,72513.0
Presentation137,37212.6
Conference Paper118,23810.8
Preprint101,3569.3
Thesis86,7677.9
Technical Report78,4297.2
Other66,5136.1
Research Proposal16,4521.5
Working Paper13,5261.2
Book13,2311.2
Experiment Findings11,9261.1
Method9,3750.9
Publication6,4710.6
Code4,5700.4
Chapter1,4250.1
Negative Results2180.0
Patent1570.0
Article1430.0
Cover Page550.0
Total1,092,934100

Percentage of agreement between the actual document type, the document type indicated in DataCite, and the document type displayed on the publication page_

MetadataPageReal
All N= 661Without null N= 485All N= 661Without null N= 485All N= 661Without null N= 485
Metadata----65.4%90%43.4%59.8%
Page65.4%90%----59.5%61.7%
Real43.4%59.8%59.5%61.7%----

Number of documents with RG-DOI cited by WoS publications_

Document typeNumber of records%Citations AverageCitations MedianCitations Max
Null5,6031.972.151.00145
Conference Paper3,3572.841.891.00217
Technical Report2,9363.741.901.00152
Preprint1,9781.951.651.0066
Thesis1,3341.541.411.0019
Other9841.481.941.00108
Poster9620.681.191.0017
Presentation8390.611.281.0026
Book6244.725.371.001,932
Working Paper3752.771.781.0034
Method1902.032.041.0035
Experiment Findings1341.121.491.009
Publication1332.063.841.0039
Research Proposal1020.621.551.0030
Code741.624.031.0098
Chapter302.111.331.005
Article42.801.751.004
Cover Page23.646.506.5010
Patent21.271.501.502
Negative Results10.461.001.001

Number of publications with RG-DOIs according to language_

LanguageResearchGateScopus
Number of RG-DOI publications(%)Number of publications(%)
English549,35674.4482,061,25787.45
Spanish53,4037.24946,9601.01
German33,6894.572,673,4282.85
Portuguese26,0973.54354,6930.38
French18,0122.441,511,6941.61
Catalan11,3641.545,4150.01
Indonesian6,6950.912,7550.00
Malay6,5690.892,1370.00
Italian6,3510.86542,7820.58
Romanian5,7310.7846,3410.05
Slovak3,8800.5337,1820.04
Dutch2,4690.33154,7810.16
Swedish2,1380.2974,8940.08
Danish2,0920.2868,9040.07
Hungarian1,9390.2673,0640.08
Esperanto1,8540.251700.00
Other6,3220.865,286,6595,63
Total1,092,93410093,843,116100
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2025-0039 | Journal eISSN: 2543-683X | Journal ISSN: 2096-157X
Language: English
Page range: 44 - 65
Submitted on: Mar 31, 2025
Accepted on: Jun 19, 2025
Published on: Jul 10, 2025
Published by: Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Science Library
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 4 issues per year

© 2025 Enrique Orduña-Malea, published by Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Science Library
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.