Academia.edu

Academia.edu was founded by Richard Price in 2008.

On its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company uses the legal name Academia Inc. The site was registered in the.edu top-level domain in 1999 when that domain was not limited to educational institutions.

Academia.edu supports the open science or open access movements and, in particular, instant distribution of research. Accordingly, the company publicly stated its opposition to the proposed (since withdrawn) 2011 U.S. Research Works Act, which would have prevented open-access mandates in the U.S.

In 2013, Elsevier sent thousands of takedown notices to Academia.edu, claiming copyright infringement for Elsevier-published content that was posted on Academia.edu. Following widespread complaint of these takedown notices by researchers, Elsevier retracted their request, and academics were allowed to continue to post their publications.

Criticism

Criticism of Company 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, since the domain name "Academia.edu" was registered in 1999, before the regulations required.edu domain names to be held solely by accredited post-secondary institutions in the US, it is allowed to remain active and operational. All.edu domain names registered before 2001 were grandfathered in, even if not an accredited USA post-secondary institution.

2015 and 2016 Complaints

In 2015, a critic, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, the director of scholarly communication at the Modern Language Association, said she found the use of the ".edu" domain name by Academia.edu to be "extremely problematic", since it might mislead users into thinking the site is part of an accredited educational institution rather than a for-profit company.

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. This led some users to start a campaign encouraging users to cancel their Academia.edu accounts. In December 2016, Academia.edu announced new premium features that includes data analytics on work and the professional rank of the viewers, which have also received criticism.

Other criticisms in 2016 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". 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)". According to a now deleted post, the University of Oklahoma libraries states that when interacting with Academia.edu, users should keep in mind that "you are not the customer," but rather "you are the product that these services seek to monetize and/or 'offer up' to advertisers," that "you might be breaking the law," even if you are uploading your own work, and finally that "there are privacy implications," because a commercial site does not follow professional standards and "may share information about you".