The Coalition for Responsible Sharing (CfRS) is a group of publishers working together to bring the practices of article-sharing platforms and scholarly collaboration networks into compliance with copyright for the benefit of curated and certified science. The group was formed in October 2017 to engage with article-sharing platforms and scholarly collaboration networks and has since taken multiple steps to address the copyright-infringing dissemination of enormous amounts of published journal articles on the largest scholarly collaboration network, ResearchGate. Before that, several attempts to work jointly with ResearchGate to find ways for ResearchGate to run its service in a copyright-compliant way were unsuccessful.

Since its formation, the CfRS has grown to 14 society, not-for-profit and commercial publishers and information analytics businesses that are currently working together to implement a long-term viable solution that brings ResearchGate’s site into compliance with copyright and that meets the needs of all stakeholders.

The CfRS does not take action lightly and its measures are not directed at researchers. Members of the CfRS have always embraced and actively encouraged legitimate sharing of scientific articles by the research community. They have worked and will continue to work with key stakeholders in scholarly communications, including researchers, librarians, and other scholarly collaboration networks, to improve and innovate the process of article-sharing to better support the research community.