I’ve removed all the content I had on academia.edu. Much of what was on my page there is available here on the publications page and the book review page. For copies of other publications, just email me.
I’ve been contemplating this for a while, but it was the disturbing auto-generated AI podcasts combined with absurd changes made a couple weeks ago to the privacy policy that finally made me decide to remove the material. The company apparently walked back some of the language in the privacy policy a few days after the policy was issued, but it seems only a matter of time before the same kinds of things happen again. I understand that academia.edu is a for-profit company that needs to make money, but this stuff just feels somehow wrong.
I’m genuinely sad about this. Over the years I discovered a lot of interesting research on academia.edu that I would probably not have otherwise encountered. Also, if the stats provided by the site are accurate and meaningful, a decent number of people found my work there. And when I was unemployed and without academic affiliation, academia.edu was one of the few means I had to kind of stay connected to the world of research.
But this points to larger issues about the dissemination and availability of research in academic journals: Is the academia.edu model really any more exploitative than traditional academic publishers for whom we write and (peer review) at no cost, just so that they then can sell our scholarship back to universities at prices that are often outrageous? I don’t know. I’m trying to publish more in open-access venues, but that whole system has its own sets of problems. There are of course the predatory open access publishers, but even the traditional journals associated with the “big” presses have open access policies that are pretty shocking. For instance, I recently had an article accepted for publication in a venerable journal. To make the article open access, the publisher asks for a fee of $3,550 USD. But someone working at a wealthier institution that has a deal with the press could publish open access in the very same journal at no personal cost. So, the articles of authors at wealthy universities are freely available, while my article sits behind a paywall (it would cost an individual about $30 USD to access the article through the publisher website). I will of course make the “Author Accepted Manuscript” available and provide copies of articles to those who contact me, but these seem like inadequate solutions to a larger problem.
I honestly don’t know what is best solutions are, but I’m convinced that it’s time for me to move on from academia.edu.
Variant Readings 
I really appreciate what you’ve chosen to do and what you say about the situation. I have similar thoughts and may follow suit, leaving a link to my own webpage.
I’m likely to do the same (re: academia.edu), but, with the precariously employed in mind, I thought I’d point out that JSTOR now has an ‘Independent Researcher’ account type, which comes with 100 free reads per month (https://www.jstor.org/action/showLogin). Not everything is there, of course, but still a meaningful connection to scholarship in the absence of a comprehensive library.
Thanks for mentioning this, Mike. Some universities also now provide JSTOR and other kinds of digital access for alumni. One can check library webpages for the details about what is available and how to sign up.
More companies will likely shoot themselves in the foot over AI in this way, although academia.edu never has been very successful at communicating change.
I wouldn’t know where I’d be now without academia.edu, and as a truly independent researcher “without any priors” so to say, it certainly is a most useful platform. Looking at views alone I have the same reach there as you did, yet I started 5 years ago from scratch.
I just wish they made everyone pay 5 or 10 bucks a year, that’ll cover the cost for most I suppose, and even the poorest of academics ought to be able to miss a fiver.
I left (inactivated) Twitter when Musk bought it, and have a relatively small presence on ResearchGate. Where would I go – honestly?
Martijn Linssen
It’s a legit question. I don’t know that other platforms have the same kind of reach. I know some people have migrated here: https://hcommons.org/. I may do that as well at some point.
Thanks very much for this, Brent. You have prompted my to cancel my payments to them. I should have done this before, especially as I am trying to boycott US companies. Also, they had put up their prices and I was not aware of it.
Dear Brent, Thank you so much for letting us know. Open access is great! I’m not yet enrolled on a Phd course, and I can’t afford the price of academic books. z-library was closed down. I am so interested in the stuff you write, and it has been fantastic being able to access some of it, and I really enjoy your emails – always SO interesting. Another hero of mine is Christian Casey who has been so generous with sharing knowledge (Egyptology) – he is an amazing person. Funding of Universities (I’m in the UK) , and access to knowledge and learning is SO important. Many thanks, Rebecca Watts
As an aside, I have been approached out of the blue by “fellow enthusiasts from academia.edu” using anglophone names and gmail addresses of that name and a several-digit number. They claim that they “very much liked” a specific book of mine which they “found” on academia.edu, but that using email is too complicated for them, and would prefer to discuss my ideas via telegram or whatsapp. A friendly reply asking what they are interested in specifically (while flattered, the copyrighted books referred to were written in German, and there was no full text on academia.edu at all) only lead to a repeat of giving them my telegram or whatsapp handle (I have neither). Such emails arrive about weekly now, always with new names and different titles they are “interested” in, but using the same pattern of names and emails. Clearly this is a scam to get access to contact data, but what a novel idea of abusing academia.edu! Kai
Create a perfect venue?
Just a thought, but I believe you would find support throughout academia, and laypersons like myself.
Kinda like a Wikipedia maybe, beg for donations once a year… Lol, I’d certainly donate and I can say without a doubt that my circle of folk would.
That said, thank you for your work, highly appreciated.
Welcome to submit to the TC Journal (SBL Press) which is open access and without any fees and we who work do so voluntarily. Soon the journal will move to a new page with Journal of Biblical Literature.
Hi Brent, many colleagues have started storing their papers on Zenodo https://zenodo.org/ It does not solve the embargo or paywall problem, but it seems more reliable than academia
I do not know what the best way forward may be, but I’d say it isn’t the current so-called academia.edu.
Hi Brent,
I appreciate you taking a stand on this issue. I hope it will stimulate discussion, but I think Academia.edu’s just one of the latest cases showing that we need to seek out and build new digital homes.
I feel the same way you do; it was certainly not an easy decision to delete the account, but the intertwining of usefulness and monetisation of our work has always been a source of discomfort for me. The fact that we find it difficult to part with such platforms is the well-known locked-in effect, which may also be seen as a form of coercion.
What I think is important is the point you make about academic publishing and access to publications. Although it has been emphasised in the discussion that Academia.edu has tendencies of reinforcing the academic class system (as does the academic publishing system), I believe that the platform has also made it possible to transcend status boundaries, e.g. by enabling users to discover interesting work by individuals regardless of their title or affiliation and to contact them directly. That is really something we need independently of commercial platforms.
For what it’s worth, I’ve also written up my thoughts on leaving the platform and discuss a few other points different from what you mention here:
https://medisi.hypotheses.org/7839
Many thanks,
Peter
Given that the auto-generated AI paper summaries don’t use the author’s voice, what’s “disturbing” about them other than that we’re not used to them?
What’s disturbing to me is how fast this untested technology is infecting so many areas of life even when nobody is asking for it. There are already loads of human podcasters out there covering lots of topics. Do we really need AI-generated podcasts of every paper on academia.edu?
The problem is that AI has limited sources to draw from and is thus does not have the breadth of knowledge of the subject matter that a human scholar would, thus knowing when certain issues are relevant and when they are non-relevant. Thus, a beginner in an academic field might read such an AI review and think everything is valid and be misled in their appreciation of the issues. For example, Academia created an AI “review” of my translation of Begrich’s Studien zu DtJs, and included a section called “Ethical Framing,” which seems to call for me to discuss how the German political situation in 1938, which is when Begrich published this, needs to be discussed, Begrich’s method evaluated, etc., because, I presume, Begrich is discussing legal procedure in the ANE and OT while living in pre-WWII Germany.