Academia.edu is a for-profit, social networking platform for researchers to share papers and connect. Features include:
- Ability to share research papers and presentations - Be sure you have the rights to share your article
- News feed based on your interests - can lead to finding relevant papers and collaborators
- Recommends academics to connect with based on who you've cited, who you follow, and your selected discipline
- Grant and funding database: focus is on STEM but does contain some social sciences-related funding opportunities ($$$)
- Once entirely free, now many of the features are only available through a membership ($$; Academia Premium) model or one-time fee.
- Connects with ORCID, Google Scholar, Twitter, and LinkedIn
- Need to have an account to view the profiles of others
- Includes metrics so can see who has viewed your profile or papers
