Abstract The goal of ResearchGate (RG) is to help users exchange scholarly information around the world. This study drew on adaptive structuration theory (AST) to investigate the social structure of RG, which had been largely overlooked by prior research. Data were crawled from RG and results were presented based on content analysis. For the social structure embedded in RG, the most frequent updates of structural features and spirit occurred in the first two years. Six representative updates for information exchange were analyzed and the newly embedded social structures were presented. For the social structure emerging in using RG, users were more willing to answer questions than ask questions, which countered intuition. Three categories were elicited to present the purpose and expectation of questions. Users were more willing to publish publications than publish projects. Compared with reading publications and projects published by others, users seldom commented on them. For the comparison between the two social structures, this paper analyzed and compared the two social structures in terms of three types of information exchange, finding that the social structure emerging in using RG differed from that embedded in RG. We suggest that this paper could potentially help the two social structures of RG promote the optimization of each other.

中文翻译：

---

了解学术社交网站的社会结构：以ResearchGate为例

摘要ResearchGate（RG）的目标是帮助用户在全球范围内交换学术信息。这项研究利用自适应结构理论（AST）来研究RG的社会结构，而先前的研究在很大程度上忽略了RG的社会结构。从RG检索数据，并根据内容分析显示结果。对于嵌入到RG中的社会结构，结构特征和精神的更新最频繁的是头两年。分析了六个代表性的信息交流更新，并介绍了新嵌入的社会结构。对于使用RG出现的社会结构，用户更愿意回答问题而不是提出问题，这与直觉相反。提出了三类来提出问题的目的和期望。与发布项目相比，用户更愿意发布出版物。与阅读他人发表的出版物和项目相比，用户很少对此发表评论。为了比较这两种社会结构，本文从三种信息交换的角度分析和比较了这两种社会结构，发现使用RG产生的社会结构与嵌入RG的社会结构不同。我们建议本文可以潜在地帮助RG的两个社会结构促进彼此的优化。发现使用RG产生的社会结构不同于RG中嵌入的社会结构。我们建议本文可以潜在地帮助RG的两个社会结构促进彼此的优化。发现使用RG产生的社会结构不同于RG中嵌入的社会结构。我们建议本文可以潜在地帮助RG的两个社会结构促进彼此的优化。