Academia.edu is an open repository of textbooks, PDFs, and research papers.
Whether you’re majoring in psychology, economics, or any other subject, it provides you with valuable textbooks and materials that you can use to advance your studies.
However, is it safe to use? What about the ethics and legality of using Academia.edu, and could you get in trouble for using it?
This is what we would be talking about in this article.
Stay tuned.
What Is Academia.edu?
Academia.edu is an open repository of scholarly journals, academic papers, and more. It has over 40 million academic papers from over 12 million academics around the world, including those at prestigious universities and research institutions.
According to Academia.edu, its mission is to “accelerate the world’s research.” According to its website, it gets nearly 100 million visitors per month, and it is immensely popular among students and academics.
It was founded by Richard Price, who wanted a platform for presenting his papers and creating an online profile as a researcher. The site grew pretty quickly as more people joined, with over 50,000 users joining in the first year alone.
However, there is an important thing to note here, and that is that Academia.edu is for profit. Despite touting values such as “open access” to educational materials, Academia.edu, above all, focuses on its own financial gain.
So, while research papers are available for free, it does have a premium membership that you will need for unrestricted search capabilities on the platform. That can hinder your research, and you can argue that it goes against the promises of “free and open access to academic research” that Academia.edu says it stands for.
Academia.edu is also a social network for researchers. As a researcher, it allows you to create a profile, showcase your work, follow other researchers, and have others follow you.
That was the original intention of Academia.edu – to provide a way for researchers to easily set up a homepage and showcase their writings.
Where Do the Research Papers on Academia.edu Come From?
Anyone can upload papers and journals on Academia.edu, so it’s not always clear whether they were published with the permission or knowledge of the authors.
Some researchers and authors upload their own academic papers, as they know that they will get more citations and exposure if they publish it in a library with so many users like Academia.edu.
On the other hand, some people publish textbooks or articles they are not authorized to, without seeking permission from the authors. Academia.edu does have a strong policy against copyright violations, but things do leak through the cracks, and copyright violations are not uncommon.
Is Academia.edu a University?
One of the biggest confusions about Academia.edu is that it is a university or a non-profit educational institution. This misconception comes from the fact that it has an .edu domain.
You can’t just buy an .edu domain and set up a site. It is reserved for actual accredited post-secondary institutions.
However, that rule went into effect in 2001, and Academia.edu was registered in 1999, before the regulation went into effect. At that point, anyone could purchase an .edu domain.
Therefore, it is grandfathered in and allowed to retain its .edu extension. Not everyone knows this, though, and they give Academia.edu extra credibility and trust it more when they really shouldn’t.
Academia.edu is not an accredited institution or even a non-profit. It is a for-profit website that charges users for full access.
It’s a business – nothing more, nothing less. In fact, at one point, it asked several researchers to consider paying a fee to get recommendations on the research papers they uploaded, although it received significant backlash and criticism for the idea.
In other words, it was asking researchers to pay to get editors to recommend their papers and boost visibility on the site.
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What Types of Resources Can You Find on Academia.edu?
Here are the main types of resources and materials you can download from Academia.edu:
- Scholarly journals
- Research papers
- Textbooks
- Articles
- Dissertations
- Syllabuses
- Class lecture video recordings
- Conference presentation recordings
- Other videos and articles
The video feature is pretty new; Academia.edu did not always support video uploads.
Is It Free to Download Papers From Academia.edu?
Yes. Although the site has faced criticism for forcing users to sign up for an account to download papers, it does allow you to download entire papers for free.
Nevertheless, the research function is limited for free users. You can search for a phrase or keyword that appears in titles only; if you want to find papers that simply mention that phrase in the text, you’ll need to sign up for a premium membership.
In addition, the free version does not let you use the search filters to refine your search and get the most specific results. The filters allow you to:
- Set year ranges for when the paper was published
- Search for papers in a specific language
- Choose which type of material you’re looking for (journal or book)
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WIll You Get a Virus From Using Academia.edu?
No. Academia.edu is safe to use.
While it’s for-profit and often has articles that were not published with permission, it is safe to use in the sense that you won’t get a virus from downloading papers from Academia.edu.
It is not a scam, and the PDFs and videos are not bundled with adware, malware, spyware, or other harmful downloads.
Is Academia.edu Ethical to Use?
Similarly, you won’t get in legal trouble for using Academia.edu. You are simply using free and open resources; if someone uploaded an article they were not allowed to, that is their problem, as you had no knowledge of how they obtained that paper.
Nevertheless, whether Academia.edu is ethical to use is another question, as it falls into a moral gray area.
First of all, there is no guarantee that the person who uploaded a paper has the proper copyright to do so. It’s entirely possible that the article or video you’re downloading or viewing is stolen.
On the other hand, you could argue that it’s not your problem. You’re simply using a free open repository, and unless you know for sure that the work you’re using was stolen, it is not your responsibility to worry about it or assume that it was.
However, Academia.edu has faced other criticisms. In addition to holding onto a misleading .edu extension and asking researchers to pay to have their work recommended, it also doesn’t allow researchers to give people unrestricted access to their work, as users have to sign in and create an account to download papers.
Furthermore, Academia.edu gets a little spammy with its emails asking users to sign up for a premium membership.
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Is Academia.edu Useful for Students or Researchers?
For students, Academia.edu is definitely useful. You will get access to a lot of papers and articles that you otherwise would have to pay for.
One drawback is that you will have to sift through a lot of irrelevant papers. You’ll find a lot of work there poorly written or simply not good quality; again, it’s a public repository that anyone can use and upload any paper to.
Without the advanced search filters you’ll get as a premium user, filtering through the irrelevant stuff to get to the good stuff can take more time. At the end of the day, though, it’s still worth it, and it doesn’t cost any money.
Furthermore, all submissions to Academia.edu go through a peer review process. That doesn’t necessarily mean it will be relevant or offer the information you need, but at least you know it has been peer-reviewed and does not contain inaccurate information.
For example, for a paper to be published on Academia Biology, it must go through a peer review process by peer reviewers who have a PhD in biology, are associated with a university or research institution, have experience specific to the field the paper covers, and meet other guidelines.
It can help you save a lot of money, as long as you are fine with the restricted search features of Academia.edu’s free plan.
However, as a researcher and author, Academia.edu may be worth it as well. It allows you to enjoy some of the following benefits:
- Get more exposure to your work and make it available to researchers
- See when you were cited or mentioned (if you have Premium)
- Connect with other researchers and scholars via the social platform aspect of Academia.edu
In addition to following others, you can message other people using the built-in messaging tool on Academia.edu. You can also sync your Google contacts and Facebook and Twitter accounts to find colleagues who are also on Academia.edu.
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Furthermore, you can get analytics on who visited your profile, saw your CV, and more. For example, you can see if a person from a specific country read one of your documents; advanced analytics, though, are reserved for premium paying members.
Academia.edu also has a job board featuring academic-related jobs that you can apply for. However, the jobs are pretty scarce; there aren’t that many opportunities, at least when I looked.
Both students and researchers, including free and paid members, can search for other users by name. Simply enter a name or keyword and then navigate to the People tab to find users on Academia.edu with that name.
You can then follow that person or click on their profile, where you can view:
- Their website
- Their CV
- Papers they have published
- Videos and courses
- Their email address and social media accounts
You can also follow or message them directly from their profile.
Is Academia.edu Premium Worth It?
Academia.edu Premium isn’t worth it for most students and researchers. One benefit of premium for students, other than the advanced search and filtering features, is that you can download “PDF packs.”
When you want to download a PDF, Academia.edu will recommend other PDFs that discuss the same topic. There might be just a handful or a few dozen PDFs in the pack, depending on the topic.
While that’s certainly useful, it might not be worth paying for.
What if you’re an author? In that case, Academia.edu Premium can give you a chance to see when you were mentioned and also give you advanced analytics, such as in-depth CV and profile analytics and which keywords people used in the Academia search bar to find your papers.
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Academia.edu Premium costs $9.99/month or $99.99/year, although graduate students can get 50% off. Make sure to check updated pricing on the checkout page or upgrade page, as it’s subject to change.
Ultimately, only you can decide whether the premium version is worth it, as it depends on your needs.
Alternatives to Academia.edu
Whether you’re looking for research papers or want to publish your own and connect with other scholars, there are various alternatives to Academia.edu you might want to consider using.
ResearchGate
ResearchGate is one of the top alternatives to Academia.edu. It also functions as a social network, allowing researchers to find and collaborate with other researchers.
It provides a platform for you to share your research with the world. Furthermore, you can find other publications, journals, and articles published by others, so you can always be up-to-date on what is happening in your field.
You’ll get access to analytics, so you can see who is reading your work. With over 20 million researchers on the platform, it’s one of the biggest academic social networks.
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arXiv.org
arXiv.og is an open access and entirely free repository, with over half a million articles. It is currently run by Cornell University and has member institutions who pay annual fees to help support the project.
One of the differences between arXiv.org and Academia.edu is that ArXiv.og doesn’t require articles to go through a peer review process before they are published on the site. Indeed, many researchers upload articles they write to get more feedback before an official peer review.
However, it does have a moderation process. Moderators can reject submissions that are not scientific papers or have other major faults.
Furthermore, there are endorsers for specific categories that ensure that submissions are relevant to the category and topic. Endorsers do not look for errors, though, and researchers from established institutions get automatic endorsement.
Google Scholar
There is, of course, Google Scholar, which is run by Google. As the largest search engine in the world, it has a wide range of publications and texts – but unlike the standard Google search engine, Google Scholar focuses on scholarly works exclusively.
The publications come from a wide range of sources, and you can sort them by date or search for executive review articles. You can also search for case law only.
In the search results, you will see how many times a text was cited, which is one way to determine credibility.
Note that Google Scholar doesn’t host these publications themselves, unlike Academia.edu. In other words, it simply shows you results from other repositories, medical journals, and private websites.
In fact, you will find results from Academia.edu on Google Scholar.
Furthermore, not all texts are fully available – some results only have the abstract, and the rest of the text might be hidden or behind a paywall, depending on the publishing site.
However, you don’t need to create an account to use Google Scholar, and it is entirely free to use as a student or researcher.
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Big Ten Academic Alliance Open Access Repositories
Many universities and educational institutions run their own open repositories – which are non-profit, unlike Academia.edu.
However, listing all of them is definitely too much for this article. Instead, I will focus on the network of repositories from the Big Ten Academic Alliance, or BTAA.
Members of this alliance include, but are not limited to:
- University of Iowa
- Purdue University
- Rutgers University – New Brunswick
- University of Michigan
- Ohio State University
The BTAA Open Access Repositories focuses on connecting scholars from different institutions. On the page linked above, you can find a list of open repositories and digital libraries run by these independent institutions.
They are free to use and typically feature a search bar that allows you to search for an author, title, or topic.
The downside of the BTAA Open Access Repositories is that there are many, so you might have to search through several digital libraries before finding what you are looking for.
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So, Is Academia.edu Safe?
Yes, Academia.edu is safe to use.
You don’t have to worry about accidentally downloading spyware, adware, or other malware when using it.
Furthermore, it is free to use and an excellent resource for students and researchers looking for free papers and articles, although some articles may be stolen or uploaded without the permission of the copyright owner.
Academia.edu is a for-profit repository, but there are other non-profit repositories that are great alternatives, such as the BTAA repositories.
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