Members of the Coalition for Responsible Sharing have begun issuing takedown notices to ResearchGate to address the remaining published articles it distributes via its site in contravention of agreements between publishers and authors. The Coalition welcomes the recent changes ResearchGate made to its platform, removing from public view a large and significant number of final published articles on its site. However, not all violations have been addressed and ResearchGate will need to take additional steps to cease unauthorized distribution of research articles. ResearchGate rejected numerous proposals for amicable solutions, including signing up to the Voluntary Principles of Article Sharing on Scholarly Collaboration Networks and implementing a user-friendly technical solution, but we remain hopeful that a constructive dialogue is possible.
Issued October 18, 2017 and signed by: American Chemical Society (chair), Brill, Elsevier, Wiley, Wolters Kluwer.