Investigating the transparency and influenceability of altmetrics using the example of the RG score and the ResearchGate platform

Abstract

The present paper investigates the transparency and influenceability of the RG score. This altmetric specially developed by the best-known academic social network ResearchGate is intended to indicate a researcher’s academic perception in one single figure. We conducted a self-experiment to demonstrate that the indications of the RG score are difficult for the user to understand and are not transparent. They therefore do not fulfil the requirements of the Leiden Manifesto for research metrics. The results of our investigation show that activity in social networks appears to have a great impact on the RG score and can strategically and selectively influence this result. Furthermore, we succeeded in entering publications by other authors as our own, thus dramatically improving our RG score. On the whole, with a little effort and without any academic publications of our own we were able to achieve an RG score which was higher than almost half the scores of all ResearchGate users. This self-experiment should be interpreted as a pilot study and can be implemented in an expanded form in future.