Academia.edu

Academia, Inc.
Screenshot
Type of business Private
Type of site
 Platform for sharing research papers
Available in English
Headquarters San Francisco, California
Area served Worldwide
Founder(s) Richard Price
Employees 23[1]
Website academia.edu
Alexa rank Negative increase 624 (International), 74 (Indonesia) (January 2018)[2]
Registration Free
Users 58 million[3]
Launched September 2008
Current status Active

Academia.edu is a for-profit American social networking website for academics.[4][5] The platform can be used to share papers, monitor their impact, and follow the research in a particular field. It was launched in September 2008,[6] with 36 million unique visitors per month as of December 2017 and over 20 million uploaded texts.[7] Academia.edu was founded by Richard Price, who raised $600,000 from Spark Ventures, HOWZAT Partners, Brent Hoberman, and others.[8]

Usage

The website allows its users to create a profile, upload their work(s), select areas of interests and then the user can browse the networks of people with similar interests among the almost, as of December 2017, 58 million users from around the world.[9]

Open science

Academia.edu proclaims it supports the open science or open access movements and, in particular, instant distribution of research, and a peer-review system that occurs alongside distribution, instead of prior to it.[10] Accordingly, the company stated its opposition to the proposed (since withdrawn) 2011 U.S. Research Works Act, which would have prevented open-access mandates in the U.S.[11]

However, Academia.edu is not an open access repository and is not recommended as a way to pursue green open access by Peter Suber and experts, who instead invite researchers to use field-specific repositories or general-purpose repositories like Zenodo.[5][12]

Domain name

Academia.edu is not a university or institution for higher learning and so under current standards it would not qualify for the ".edu" top-level domain. However, the domain name "Academia.edu" was registered in 1999, prior to the regulations requiring .edu domain names to be held solely by accredited post-secondary institutions. All .edu domain names registered prior to 2001 were grandfathered in, even if not an accredited post-secondary institution.[13][14]

A critic, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, the Director of Scholarly Communication at the Modern Language Association, said she finds the use of the ".edu" domain name by Academia.edu to be "extremely problematic", since the domain name might mislead users into thinking the site is part of an accredited educational institution rather than a for-profit company.[14]

On its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company uses the legal name Academia Inc.[15]

Financial history

In November 2011, Academia.edu raised $4.5 million from Spark Capital and True Ventures.[8] Prior to that, it had raised $2.2 million from Spark Ventures and a range of angel investors including Mark Shuttleworth, Thomas Lehrman, and Rupert Pennant-Rea.[8] In September 2013, the company raised $11.1 million from Khosla Ventures, True Ventures, Spark Ventures, Spark Capital and Rupert Pennant-Ream,[16] bringing its total equity funding to $17.7 million.[15][17]

Reception

Many academics are happy about the increased publicity their research can garner due to the website, but some are worried about the effect on research and science in general, especially since Academia.edu refuses to make its business model public.[4] TechCrunch remarked that Academia.edu gives academics a "powerful, efficient way to distribute their research"[18][19] and that it "will let researchers keep tabs on how many people are reading their articles with specialized analytics tools", and "also does very well in Google search results".[18] Academia.edu seems to reflect a combination of social networking norms and academic norms.[20]

Months after its acquisition of Academia.edu rival Mendeley, Elsevier sent thousands of takedown notices to Academia.edu, a practice that has since ceased, following widespread complaint by academics, according to Academia.edu founder and chief executive Richard Price.[21][22]

Criticism

In early 2016, some users reported having received e-mails from Academia.edu where they were asked if they would be interested in paying a fee to have their papers recommended by the website's editors.[23] This led some users to start a campaign encouraging users to cancel their Academia.edu accounts.[24]

Other criticisms include the fact that Academia.edu uses a "vendor lock-in" model: "It's up to Academia.edu to decide what you can and can't do with the information you've given them, and they're not likely to make it easy for alternative methods to access".[24] This is in reference to the fact that, although papers can be read by non-users, a free account is needed in order to download papers: "you need to be logged in to do most of the useful things on the site (even as a casual reader)".[24]

A registered user, in order to use advanced search on the site and several other functions, needs to subscribe to premium ($100- per year, or $10- per month) as explained on the site when using basic title search.

In December 2016, Academia.edu announced new premium features that includes data analytics on work and the professional rank of the viewers,[25] which have also received criticism.[9][26][27]

References

  1. ↑ "About". Academia.edu. Retrieved 2016-05-15.
  2. ↑ "academia.edu Traffic Statistics". Retrieved 21 January 2018.
  3. ↑ Academia.edu. "Hiring". Retrieved 2016-07-22.
  4. 1 2 Some academics remain skeptical of Academia.edu
  5. 1 2 Fortney, Katie; Gonder, Justin (2015-12-01). "A social networking site is not an open access repository". OSC. Retrieved 2016-07-22.
  6. ↑ Cutler, Kim-Mai. "Academia.Edu Overhauls Profiles As The Onus Falls On Researchers To Manage Their Personal Brands". Techcrunch. Retrieved 2012-10-19.
  7. ↑ Academia.edu. "About". Retrieved 2017-12-29.
  8. 1 2 3 "Academia.edu | CrunchBase Profile". Crunchbase.com. Retrieved 2012-02-22.
  9. 1 2 Bond, Sarah. "Dear Scholars, Delete Your Account At Academia.Edu". Forbes. Retrieved 2017-01-26.
  10. ↑ Richard Price (2012-02-05). "The Future of Peer Review". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2012-02-22.
  11. ↑ Richard Price (2012-02-15). "The Dangerous "Research Works Act"". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2012-02-22.
  12. ↑ Peter Suber (2016). "Open Access book §10 self help".
  13. ↑ "edu Policy Information". Net.educause.edu. 2001-10-29. Archived from the original on 2013-04-20. Retrieved 2012-02-22.
  14. 1 2 McKenna, Laura (17 December 2015). "The Convoluted Profits of Academic Publishing". The Atlantic.
  15. 1 2 "A social networking site is not an open access repository". University of California Office of Scholarly Communication. Retrieved 7 July 2016.
  16. ↑ "About Academia.edu". Academia.edu. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
  17. ↑ "Academia.edu". Crunchbase. Retrieved 7 July 2016.
  18. 1 2 "Academia.edu Raises $4.5 Million To Help Researchers Share Their Scholarly Papers". TechCrunch. 2011-11-30. Retrieved 2012-02-22.
  19. ↑ "Academia.edu – $4.5M in Funding, 3M Unique Monthly Visitors – Can They Change Science Publication?". Singularity Hub. 2011-12-11. Archived from the original on 2013-04-20. Retrieved 2012-02-22.
  20. ↑ Thelwall, M.; Kousha, K. (2014). "Academia.edu: Social network or Academic Network?". Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 65 (4): 721. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.308.6099. doi:10.1002/asi.23038. Preprint
  21. ↑ Parr, Chris (June 12, 2014). "Sharing is a way of life for millions on Academia.edu". Times Higher Education. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  22. ↑ Howard, Jennifer (December 6, 2013). "Posting Your Latest Article? You Might Have to Take It Down". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  23. ↑ "Scholars Criticize Academia.edu Proposal to Charge Authors for Recommendations". The Chronicle of Higher Education. 2016-01-29. Retrieved 2017-01-26.
  24. 1 2 3 "Should you #DeleteAcademiaEdu? On the role of commercial services in scholarly communication". Impact of Social Sciences. 2016-02-01. Retrieved 2017-01-26.
  25. ↑ Team, The Academia edu (2016-12-20). "How do people find your papers? Academia.edu Introduces a New Premium Feature". Medium. Retrieved 2017-01-26.
  26. ↑ "Academia, Not Edu". Planned Obsolescence. 2015-10-26. Retrieved 2017-01-26.
  27. ↑ "The end of Academia.edu: how business takes over, again". diggit magazine. 2017-04-26. Retrieved 2017-05-02.
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