Academia.edu Reviews
Academia.edu is a social networking website created by and designed for academics so that they can have a community which gives them the ability to stay current and plugged in to their fields.
How Does it Work?
According to their homepage, Academia.edu is a growing community of over 160 million researchers which hosts millions of unique visitors each month.
Unlike traditional social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, the main goal of this website is to allow socialization and sharing within academic fields.
A lot of emphasis is placed on this site being a hub where people can easily post their academic papers, which allows colleagues from around the world to help accelerate the research process.
But Academia.edu also gives their users the ability to monitor “deep analytics” on the impact of their research and track the latest research being conducted in their area of academia they follow.
While current popular networking sites have also helped academics from all over the world connect and communicate, this website is specifically designed for that purpose, which makes it easier to do the type of communicating which these professionals are looking for.
The website is intended to foster a professional and communal environment for networking, listing citations, and file sharing, and keeps academics up to date on the latest people, papers, and talks in their field.
Like other networking sites, this one also provides a mobile app so that you can keep connected at all times and receive updates, in order to better fulfill their promise of keeping academics up to date.
Is Academia.edu Safe?
With this type of public sharing, a lot of concern has been voiced about potential copyright issues which may arise from the use of this site and your personal work, but Academia.edu states that they honor and enforce all copyright laws and will remove any files or users which infringe upon these rights.
If you have any experience with Academia.edu or their services, please leave your reviews below.
Academia.edu Customer Reviews
-
Sort Reviews By:
ResearchGate is better and always FREE
Something has gone seriously wrong at Academia.edu and I'd like to write about my experience more formally - but I'll try and keep it short for now. First off, I'm writing as a researcher and professor of research methods and senior thesis; all should know that ResearchGate.net offers exactly what Academia premium claims to offer - but for free.
I was already on RG.net when Academia.EDU came along and I became an early adopter and even encouraged interested colleagues and students to create accounts. They offered me access to new features before they came out and even gave me a 'job' of "Reviewer" and later asked me to be a peer reviewer and to submit to their (failed?) "Academia Letters" an "open access" on-line pub w/rapid review, no author fees, blablablah.
Today however, marks the very bottom of the barrel - I've been ignoring their notifs long time now but today they had so many new articles they thought might I be an author of, I to double check; seven articles - MOST WERE SPAMMY SCAMS! Two "article" titles and author lists were apparent mashups of items in their database and all looked very CLICKABLE if I didn't already know every single research Item I have had any part in since my first peer reviewed pub in 1994. RG.net never has any issues finding what I actually wrote and does a really great job of tracking who reads my work, and what articles are citing my work; RG does it all for free better than Academia.eDu Premium ever did.
So, I'm torn, do I delete my account? or accept all these new items as mine and see where it goes? I already fell for their premium service once including a website; even their website building UI for me to build my personal website was unworkable.
The really sad thing is we DON'T NEED ACADEMIA.EDU! RG is free for researcher to post pre/reprints and free for the public to go read that work. RG also protects copyright for the legit journals . Academia.edU (YOU are their mark!) is not "non profit" nor is it run by educators or researchers or academics of any kind. It WAS an interesting "Crowd sourced" silicon valley start up but something has gone very wrong at Academia."edu".
Keep your work alive forever, it seems!
I've used it to upload articles I did decades ago, so now they are online for all to see! I'm proud of my work and want to share it instead of having it disappear after I croak. (I am 88 years old now.)
Also, I've seen where folks I don't know have cited articles I've written (once it was a photograph I published in Wikipedia) and given me credit for it, and it makes me feel good that my work has not gone for naught.
As soon as I finish this critique, I am going to upload some more of my quiescent stuff, either published or unpublished, so that my efforts can bear fruit in the future.
My problem with this site is that there is a lot of chaff and spam mixed in with the good parts.
ACADEMIA.EDU ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES
They say that they are an Educational Literally
Organization for Knowledge and Culture,
but they violate GDPR and use the articles,
to get information,
for their own interest!
They are FREEMASONS and hidden Sects,
behind FAKE EDUCATIONAL PROFILE,
who want followers,
for ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES!
They use E-mail TRACKING,
to track your E-mails!
STAY AWAY FROM THEM!
They use Lawyers in Cyprus to help these illegal activities!
Expensive!
Help contact from their website is not safe.
The site sees your name and matches it with similar names, maybe not you at all. If you have a common name, you will get many matches. I wouldn't worry about it if i were you.
Gross infringement of copyright
Providing a potential platform for doing something wrong is not doing something wrong and, in a free society, even necessary. There are laws for dealing with copyright infringement.
If you own a bar and you see someone selling guns or drugs in the bar then it is YOUR responsibility to ensure that your bar is not used for illegal activity. The same goes for illegal/unethical activity in online spaces. Academia.edu is not an innocent bystander, IF they are enabling the activity then they are liable.
I don’t think it’s legit
The below email was sent to your organization on: 20190520
Value of Academia.edu
I uploaded the draft of a paper but it does not show on my page.
Narasingha Sil
Going to be cancelling my Academia.edu account
I agree. I have never published anything, I was on there out of interest and to follow researchers. However, it claims I have 25 publication mentions. The site just generates random data and tries to trick you with it. Complete scam.
The software matches similar names. It's not perfect. You can click on a box for "This is me" or "This is not me." I don't see any problem. I've found about three mentions of stuff I did years ago and some professor cited in his or her book. Makes me feel good.
When I say 'rubbish' I refer to the response of George Garrigues.
The complainant is right. This site is a scam and the police will be informed.
You upload a paper to pay for know who your readers are
It's worse than that. You pay the $79 they insist you need to pay to see their analytics, and then you discover the 510 mentions they claim you have are for one Joachim P. How does that match Jer H.B.? They consider 'the first name is the same letter' enough for a match?!
This is your second comment about the same problem. The software is not perfect. Just click "This is not me" and that's it!
BUYER BEWARE!
They just charged me $99 and I NEVER EVER shared any banking details with them!!! How can that happen? What is my recourse?? Please help!
You probably clicked the Paypal option.
I wish you and everyone else would just find and use ResearchGate.net which is older and better - somehow Academia."EDU"! ripped off their model and has gotten scammier every year. But I was an early adopter and I got taken too! Something changed.
"YOU WERE MENTIONED IN A PAPER" SCAM
Scam... And will send you Scam emails!
Same experience as Michael. I kept getting very annoying emails (because they were outright lies) saying something like, e.g., "five hundred twenty three people" have referenced papers I had written. The "number" changed various times but always in the hundreds.... Problem with this is ... my name is 100% unique and no one else on the planet has the same name. So there could not be any mix up or misattribution. So this was nothing more than a MASSIVE LIE and for what - to get me to sign up for a paid for premium membership. I told them as such several times in emails and each time they replied with an answer that did not address my point/ question - i.e., non answer. This is nothing more than a a techie group to use Big Data group using the power of the internet to harvest your data build an expanded subscriber list with paid memberships and use your information for whatever their purpose ... to capitalize on - I am not clear there is any real product / benefit delivered and they appear to have one purpose ... to make money. Any serious researcher that cannot get published in a peer reviewed journal is their target audience to sign up for a premium paid for subscription. I cannot think of any serious researcher that would want to publish their work on Academica.com. I agree with many of the comments and feel that this "appear to be" a scam. The technology area is weak in regulating this sort of thing but it illicitly harvesting my personal information to make money for purpose should be illegal. Some outfits harvest your information to sell to others (and make money). Such as the websites that gather demographic data or neighborhood addresses/property owners (all public data) and then resell it. such scams need to be regulated.
The issue is that you find a LOT of high level scholars on the site, Professors in Universities etc (I know some of them, and they share papers they have published (and reliable - they can be discussed as ever, but they are reliable, and come form conferences, etc.
scam
I like the service but this company lacks scruples
I realize saintlike behavior doesn't come standard with companies competing in a free market---and don't get me wrong: I'm a Premium subscriber, big fan and supporter of Academia.edu---but with that said, the veracity of their marketing strategy is questionable to say the least. For example, I just received an email from them that contains this quote from an unnamed "Professor of History at Princeton University":
"I uploaded a recent article. Normally this article would have been read by 5-6 people in 2 years. I got 20 views within a few minutes, and 100 views within the next month. Academia.edu is the best thing that has ever happened to my research."
Setting aside the fact that this looks suspiciously made-up to begin with, a very high percentage of these so-called "views" Academia.edu loves to brag about originate from search terms that resemble---but have nothing to do with---a person's research. Assuming a real history prof actually submitted that review, it's highly likely that among all those "100 views" he or she supposedly received during the first month, one or two at the most were legitimate.
weird that they want your Google contacts
It seems strange to me that if you use your Google account to log in, academia.edu looks through your contact list. Seems like they don't need anything more than your name and e-mail address.
Better to make a separate account than use Google to log in, I'd say, until they clear up what they're using those contacts for.
It is a scam
In Academia.edu they use web crawling robots to scan for publications and other social networks to gather personal information (including pictures) and co-authorship data of researchers. Then they automatically generate profiles and send your co-authors invitations to join the network pretending that it is you. If one of your co-authors clicks on a link of the e-mail it will automatically generate a profile for you co-author without asking for permission nor informing about the legal terms and conditions.
There are several illegal aspects in that procedure, identity theft to start with.
I originally signed on as a non premium customer to learn what they could do for me. I was working on a particular study involving a water supply line - home warranty scam being marketed by false information and targeted scare tactics of elderly retired people. See my earlier comment above. I canceled my membership . I was originally interested in publishing but canceled after seeing what this was about. The FCC / FTC need to investigate, not sure what the basis or industry would be .. maybe technology or internet fraud.
ACCESSED MY WEBSITE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION.