  While ResearchGate has become the most popular academic social networking
site in terms of regular users, not all institutions have joined and the scores
it assigns to academics and institutions are controversial. This paper assesses
the presence in ResearchGate of higher education institutions in Europe and the
US in 2017, and the extent to which institutional ResearchGate Scores reflect
institutional academic impact. Most of the 2258 European and 4355 US higher
educational institutions included in the sample had an institutional
ResearchGate profile, with near universal coverage for PhD-awarding
institutions found in the Web of Science (WoS). For non-PhD awarding
institutions that did not publish, size (number of staff members) was most
associated with presence in ResearchGate. For PhD-awarding institutions in WoS,
presence in RG was strongly related to the number of WoS publications. In
conclusion, a) institutional RG scores reflect research volume more than
visibility and b) this indicator is highly correlated to the number of WoS
publications. Hence, the value of RG Scores for institutional comparisons is
limited.
