Dive Summary:

• ResearchGate, the social network for scientists and researchers, has announced Bill Gates' investment in the company as part of its $35 million Series C round of financing.
• ResearchGate wants to change the way institutions and scientists think about research by making the process more transparent. Ijad Madisch, CEO of ResearchGate, said, “I think science is broken. If you’re doing research, you don’t publish the negative results. You only publish the positive results. But 97% of the things you’re doing are failed experiments – that’s raw data.”
• ResearchGate is also seeking to transform the peer review process. Madisch noted “the current system needs months after you’ve sent a letter to the [journal's] editor, if it gets accepted. Right now it’s a pre-peer review. I would rather do a post-review through the network: you publish it and the network can then give feedback. We’re creating a peer review system in our network which takes care of that. No-one has tried that before."

From the article:

So what’s that going to be used for? According to Madisch, the first task is to refine the product, particularly aspects such as its API. “This will be the interface to the outside world so people can build applications using our data,” he said. “We want to be the telephone for scientists, but we won’t be able to build all the different apps.”

ResearchGate already gives universities and specific departments the ability to set up their own pages on the platform. Madisch said the company now wants to build on this and its current private project functionality, providing the opportunity for universities and departments to establish their own private collaboration networks on ResearchGate. “We also want to extend the API to departmental and university pages, so they can create their own apps for problems they want to solve,” he added.