DefinePK

Abstract

Madam, my paper1 highlighted an important shortcoming of ResearchGate (RG) however, before its publication, ResearchGate had already made some changes to its user interface and probably in its policies. For example, the recent addition of "what you\\\'re working on right now/add your current project", and the options similar to Facebook such as "like" or "comment". Also, recent removal of the impact points from the profile of users is a good initiative taken by the RG staff. This initiative and the recent developments might help decline the shortcomings of RG. Another development seen in RG is the removal of impact factor for possible or probable predatory journals. Most of the journals mentioned in the Beall\\\'s list and those in my paper have now been available without an impact factor on RG which will be helpful for early career and inexperienced researchers to avoid such journals. 1,2
It is very important to understand that the Thomson Reuters (now Clarivate Analytics) is the legitimate impact factor agency and in this context, journals included in its Journal Citation Reports (JCR), which is issued every year, should be considered a suitable outlet for publication. A journal\\\'s mere inclusion in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), one of the databases of Thomson Reuters, does not guarantee the credibility of the journal as it is the initial step for a journal\\\'s evaluation. There is no clear cut demarcation between legitimate and predatory journals however, a cautious decision by the researchers in selecting the target journal is important. In this regard, apart from the journal selection strategies mentioned in my paper, Beall\\\'s "Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers" is also a helpful resource. 3
Despite these recent improvements in the ResearchGate, there is still ambiguity prevailing. It is worth mentioning that the RG users express reservations about its unclear and ambiguous features such as the journal impact factor, researchers\\\' impact points and the RG score.4 For instance, impact factor on RG is different from the impact factor mentioned in a journal\\\'s website because the impact factor on RG is based on its own records of the citation counts from the work published in a journal without considering any indexation database (such as Science Citation Index Expanded) into account. To elaborate further, the Journal of Pakistan Medical Association