11 July 2019
Springer Nature and ResearchGate have extended their content sharing pilot. The second iteration of the pilot will now see four times more Springer Nature content being rolled out across the ResearchGate platform, including content from specialised Springer journals. This enhanced accessibility means more Springer Nature authors will benefit from this partnership along with more Springer Nature-published content on the ResearchGate platform for ResearchGate users to access, download and share.
In addition, solutions will be assessed and tested to improve access to research literature for researchers off campus and on different devices. ResearchGate users without a Springer Nature institutional subscription will have access to articles in a non-downloadable format. This will be assessed via internal research and community feedback to see whether it is a sustainable model for the future.
The continuation of the pilot is the result of positive feedback from users during the first phase, which was launched on 7 March 2019 and provided full-text articles from 23 Nature-branded journals to ResearchGate so they could be made automatically available on authors’ profiles for all ResearchGate users to access, read and share on or off campus.
In the second phase, ResearchGate and Springer Nature will work with librarians to assess how a more comprehensive picture of the use of research literature by their patrons can be provided by working towards aligning the cooperation with established industry standards.