Scholarly Identity: A Guide

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

• Academia.edu is very limiting and makes a lot of what was once freely shared, only available to members ($$)
• Now the only people who can access your papers are limited to subscribers
• The .edu domain is deceiving. Academia.edu would no longer be eligible for a .edu domain, since it's a private for-profit company not connected to an institute of education.
• Not a true repository, access is limited, and the goal of the site is not tied to long-term preservation and access. 
• Has received numerous take-down orders from publishers - Academia.edu encourages researchers to upload their papers, even when they don't have the right
• Lots of spam. May also spam colleagues
• Can pay a fee to have your paper Recommended to others
• Restricts full search results to Premium subscribers