Researchgate.net crawler and a new contribution determines sequence (CDS) method

General and Focus crawlers are the main types of web crawlers used for different goals, with different crawling techniques and architecture. Our crawler was written in Java language using different software and libraries. To test the crawler, it has been run on the academic social network, Researchgate.net from 3 rd.April to 28th.June 2014 and retrieved real data. The crawler consists of three main algorithms to crawl information such as researchers details, publications details, questions/answers activity details. The retrieved data has been analyzed to highlight the performance of Canadian researchers, in the field of Computer Science on Researchgate.net. Data analysis has been done from the collaboration and (alt)metrics perspectives. Among other features Researchgate.net came with “Impact Points” and “RG Score” (alt)metrics. The former builds on ISI Journal Impact Factor, which disregards author’s contribution in its calculations. A new Contribution Determines Sequence (CDS) method has been developed and tested, with all required scripts which showed better performance than other methods.