Usage of ResearchGate by the Research Scholars: A Study of the University of Calcutta

Academic social network sites (ASNS) have emerge as an opportunity to facilitate outreach of research work, share research data, ideas, collaboration, and knowledge. The present study is an attempt to report the use of ResearchGate, one of the academic social networking sites by the Research Scholars of the University of Calcutta. The study has used the two most common methods of survey, namely the descriptive survey method and the questionnaire tool. A sample of 140 researchers from Calcutta University was invited to participate in the survey. An online questionnaire was prepared over Google forms platform and spread. It was found that the majority of them were from the pure and applied sciences. This article focuses on one of the social networking services for researchers, namely ResearchGate (RG), to assess the research visibility and impact on research of universities in University of Calcutta, India. This study indicated male researchers are more motivated for use of RG than the women researchers of the University of Calcutta. It found that the enhancement of researchers’ ability to stay alongside of new developments in my field of research is most beneficial to the University of Calcutta researchers by using RG. The study is an original research work mainly dealing with data collected through survey the research scholars of the University Calcutta, Kolkata, West Bengal, India and collected data has been evaluated. Results are highlighting for the major findings, suggestions and conclusion