Recall that ResearchGate is headquartered in Berlin, Germany. And according to the INFODOCKET website, a chamber of the Munich Regional Court has ruled that the research networking site ResearchGate has to take down articles uploaded without consent from their original publishers.

A case was brought forward in 2017 by the Coalition for Responsible Sharing, a group of publishers that includes Elsevier and the American Chemical Society. Members of the coalition had sent more than 500,000 takedown notices to ResearchGate in order to remove articles from paid-for journals that had been uploaded and made available for free by users of the platform, according to a statement.

Dr. James Milne, Chair of the Coalition for Responsible Sharing and President, ACS Publications, said: «We welcome the court´s decision confirming that it is illegal for ResearchGate to make content available on its site without permission from publishers, which it does for its own commercial gain. ResearchGate’s insistence that publishers should send takedown notices for this content is not in line with the law, and it is highly disruptive to the research community».

From the ResearchGate Statement: We have offered a «notice and takedown» process, and further measures to safeguard copyright, since the inception of the company, and have also built a content blocking system contemplated by recent changes in German and EU law. These measures are available to any publisher who wishes to take advantage of them, and Elsevier and ACS are already using them.

Ijad Madisch, ResearchGate co-founder and CEO: «We built ResearchGate to support researchers. This litigation with Elsevier and ACS–now almost five years old–dates back to a different era when most publishers did not put the interests of the research community front and center. While we now have strong partnerships with many leading publishers, this ruling is a reminder of how resistant to change some actors in the scholarly communications ecosystem remain. Our work is as necessary today as it was when we started ResearchGate».

Source: https://www.infodocket.com/2022/02/15/report-from-germany-researchgate-must-take-down-elsevier-articles-court-rules/

We would like to remind you that our publisher PC TECHNOLOGY CENTER allows the authors of our journals to publish their articles on ResearchGate. The only prerequisite is to indicate the place of publication (journal name, issue number and the digital doi identifier assigned when the article was published).

To post and promote your publication on ResearchGate, we suggest using our video: «How to register at ResearchGate and add your research».