In the last 12 years the creation of Academic Social Networks has increased, in 2007 it seemed normal to observe the creation of Research Gate as another step in the promotion of social interactions through the web, however, much has happened since that. Research Gate has taken great importance for the number of registered researchers and the possibilities offered as a social network for the academic field for free.

It is not the only network, there are also Academia and Mendeley; as well as scientific production registration networks such as Scopus Author, Google Scholar, ORCID, Redalyc Authors and more recently the migration of the ResearcherID profile to Publons expanding the editorial and arbitration issue, even Microsoft is promoting an academic social network. However, after experiencing them and observing the advantages and disadvantages, is important to describe 8 reasons for which to create a profile in Research Gate:

• Establish a researcher profile with the respective associations (research centers, universities) that can be used of reference for any international contact.
• Include your full-text documents on a single platform and be located together and quickly in your profile (some of the other networks are associated with a specific indexer, and therefore, only add the documents that are indexed in it.)
• Publish the projects you are working on, linked to the associated productivity. In addition to associating the researchers involved regardless of the country or institution.
• Interact with other researchers internationally through messages and invitations within the same platform.
• Collect information on anymatter of interest through the questions and provide others with answers.
• Get ​​metrics that not only involve citations of articles, books or documents; but also of the interaction on the web with your peers, readings of your documents and their recommendation on the portal.
• Create DOIS for unpublished documents that you can later share on the profile.

Remember: it is not just about creating the profile, you need to keep it updated and take advantage of the different tools it provides. Try it!