The alternative is
Research Gate. And it is not in second place. It has over 7 million members, about 95% of all active scientists in the world.
But, if you are a global warming denier, I wouldn’t get too excited. Research Gate checks your credentials. You are not allowed to register unless you actually ARE a scientist and have documents to support that claim. Also, while there are no referees
per se, it is self-policing in that any member can flag a problematic paper. I did: I caught someone plagiarizing off of someone else and brought this to the attention of the administrators.
Plagiarist busted!
'Facebook for Scientists' Could Change Science Research For Good -- And For The Better
Researchers who have been caught fabricating data immediately come to the attention of Research Gate because they are such a huge network that they have contacts at every journal. In contrast, because traditional peer reviewed journals are so cloistered, they are often unaware that a paper they are reviewing has already been retracted elsewhere, which is why
Retraction Watch was recently created. But even with Retraction Watch on guard, it is still generally true that Research Gate always knows about and bans papers with fake data while editors of traditional journals tend to ignore events at competing journals.
The Huffington Post article brings up another good point:
Even if researchers are not fabricating their data, only “interesting” experiments are published in peer-reviewed journals. This creates a bias towards positive results just as much as outright fabrication does. A lot of negative data on medical treatments is tossed because failed experiments are considered uninteresting. But then one doctor who was simply lucky to have a bunch of patients with a strong will to live manages to publish a paper giving himself credit for his brilliant treatment program. I discuss this phenomenon in more detail here:
Scientific Method, Groundless Guesswork – Same Thing?