| Votes | By | Price | Discipline | Year Launched |
| Academia.edu | FREE | Interdisciplinary |
academia.edu is a commercial, online platform founded in 2008 (by Richard Price) which aims to connect researchers, academics and students across the world by allowing them to create profiles, upload their work, and track readership and influence. Its stated mission is to “accelerate the world’s research” by making scholarly outputs more widely discoverable and shareable. It serves as an LinkedIn alternative for researchers.
What it offers
On Academia.edu, users can:
Create a personal academic profile listing their institution, interests and publications.
Upload their research papers (e.g., pre-prints, published papers), making them visible to others.
Follow researchers around the world and discuss on various research topics, browse large collections of papers across many disciplines.
Access analytics (sometimes via paid “Premium” features) about who’s viewing their work, citation and readership data.
Users and applicability
The platform is used globally by scholars, from graduate students to established faculty, across humanities, social sciences, engineering, sciences and more. For someone looking to increase the visibility of their work, monitor engagement, or network with peers, Academia.edu provides a convenient hub. It can serve as a supplemental tool for research dissemination, although it does not replace formal peer-reviewed journals or institutional repositories.
Key considerations & criticisms
Despite its benefits, several issues merit attention:
Academia.edu is a for-profit enterprise, unlike many institutional repositories or nonprofit open-access platforms.
While it presents itself as part of the open access / open science movement, critics argue that it lacks the permanence, transparency and non-profit governance of institutional repositories.
The site uses the “.edu” domain, which may mislead some users into thinking it is an educational institution rather than a commercial platform.
Uploading papers may need copyright clearance depending on the journal’s terms, simply posting a publisher’s final version may violate agreements.