Are You A Premium Member?
Have you ever heard of academia.edu?
If yes, immediately wash your head clear from the thought of ever joining! The company portrays itself as an academic-sort-of-a-type of institution. It now has an academic journal part, it provides all members absolutely nothing, unless you join as a premium member.
Academicians upload new papers they published. Academia.edu also keeps track of citations–meaning how many times and where an article that you authored or coauthored was cited somewhere.
Note how they suggests that academics from Oxford, Berkeley, etc., use their “database”. I doubt any of that is true. When I get an email about any of my citations, I have to actually approve that indeed, that is “me” and not someone else they just cited. No academic institution would ask this question. They would know perfectly well if the person emailed is one of the authors.
Now, to set the records straight, 3 years ago–just after Covid started in 2020, on June 13, 2020 to be precise, I subscribed so see what this was all about. The subscription is $99. I never received a letter of “Hey! Welcome” or “You are now subscribed” or anything whatsoever… 2021 and 2022 went by fast and we all had bigger fish to fry than an academic membership, so I forgot about this subscription completely.
The Emails
I received emails from them often daily. The emails would say things like: “Someone saw your article” or “Your paper was cited in…” or “Four people searched for you earlier on Google”. These are actual email titles I received from them regularly for the past 3 years. No emails about my premium membership… ever!
The Bill
In comes our credit card bill and we find an unusual charge, this time $173.50. Since I am a member in many academic organizations, my husband, who oversees the bills, usually let’s go a $99 charge, since that is a common membership fee in many places. But $173.50??? Where does an amount like this come from? Luckily, this time he got stuck on the billed amount and asked me what it was about.
I went hunting for what it was and found out this was the new annual auto renewal for academia.edu premium membership! I said “What? I am being charged for a premium membership fee?“
The Discovery!
As it turns out, academia.edu, quite illegally, has auto-renewed my membership without ever notifying me. This is illegal in the US and especially in California, which is the location of academia.edu and also me. California has a very specific law that a business like this must follow. In California, any business with an auto-renewal system MUST by law notify the person 15-45 days prior to auto renewal. In the past 3 years of my apparent membership and auto renewals, I have not only not received anything like this, I was also not even aware that I was a paying premium member because they never ever sent a note saying I was.
The Dirt
After discovering my “silent” membership with academia.edu, I requested a refund for all three years–leaving only my membership payment of 2020 with them, since that was done by me. They refunded the last payment, the $173.50 but not the rest, saying that it’s over 30 days past and their corporate regulations don’t allow this.
CORPORATE REGULATIONS.. huh? It’s OK to have illegal corporate regulations of taking automatic membership fees in silence without a single notification but suddenly the 30-day regulation, a voluntary date the company created for itself is virtuously upheld.
I also find it funny that no matter how many times I contacted them, it was always the same person answering. Is that even possible in a corporation so large that even Oxford and Berkeley are using them? I don’t think so. The connection to Oxford is Richard Price, who is the Founder and CEO of Academia.edu. He studied philosophy at the University of Oxford. Philosophy. Not computer science, not technology, not business, and apparently not law either. I loved this part of his resume:
“Prior to Academia.edu, Richard founded a number of other companies, all alongside his PhD. His first one was a banana cake company, Richard’s Banana Bakery, which sold banana cakes to offices in London. He then founded Dashing Lunches, which was a sandwich company, delivering sandwiches to offices in London.”
From Richard Price
After bananas and sandwiches, yep… now into academic publishing. What a scam!
My Recommendations
If you are a member of academia.edu, check your membership charges! See if you were charged behind your back, like I was. Request a refund immediately! File a complaint with the BBB and the FTC. Cancel your membership! I did all of the above.
There is absolutely nothing this company does that other free legitimate educational institutions don’t already do! If you want to know your citation score, check out SCOPUS, or ORCID, or the journal where you published your academic article(s) and see how many citations they show. Avoid the trap by academia.edu!
Comments are welcome, as always, and are censored for appropriateness.
Angela
Clueless Doctors & Scientists 
I was not scammed by them just because do not give my card number to strangers – but I have heard about complaints and refund claims. What I have personally seen in my mailbox was a real spam attack. My solution against spammers is being rude to them, I mean really rude 😀 and so far it has helped 😀 There is no way to tell them politely, which I would do, but they do not listen. And yes those mails “your name has been mentioned by […]” This is not even my real name and I use it for private conversations and internet searches. To keep it short – another gang of spammers and, possibly, scammers (which I cannot confirm from my own experience but have heard) so do not give your email to strangers and never give them your bank data. A combat engineer is only entitled to one mistake, and so is a civilian card holder.
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White Swan,
What you are saying makes no sense at all. Spammers are often bots and sometimes people in prison–yes… they do get the chance to troll online and make people go nuts! They get a kick out of your rude responses because that is precisely what they want.
You sound so silly that I am suspecting you are one of these trolls… So here you go: start trolling.
Angela
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What dos not make sense to me is your position. I could not care less how spammers generate their spam, whether they type it themselves or use some kind of AI/bots, their intention is tricking me into “premium subsciption”, and my intention is not getting their spam in my mailbox. If they ran their business in my country and had a physical office I would just write a few lines to the local police. and the spammers/fraudsters would be held responsible. It does not work that way online and internationally. Even if I told the police there is a spammer out there overseas, the police cannot do anything about it, nor can my mail provider.
As far as rude answers to spam mail are concerned, the Golden Rule applies – those who do not spam will not be told where to go, but those who do send spam to any mailbox (could be mine or anyone else’s, many people dislike spam) are doing this at their own risk. By the way, just checked my mailbox this morning and the number of spam mail is 0, I hope it remains that way.
Regarding trolling, I leave this occupation to you as you seem to be more experienced in that field, and you have already started trolling in this discussion. you may as well continue.
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Holly Moly! You are responding to my post on my blog and you call me trolling?
You must be a completely idiotic trolling bot… needs some reprogramming lol…
Hahahahahahahahaha
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Very bitter, I was about to pay for the clothes but people like this arbitrarily renewed the premium package while I had previously canceled the renewal. Please show me how to complain to get a refund.
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You need to send an email to them. Look for their email address on their website and send them a message, requesting refund.
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Yes, I have also emailed them but have not received any response, can I contact you privately to know more about the complaint, as I am not American so I am not sure 🥹🥹🥹
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I ma sorry but I can’t help you privately any more than I can here openly.
There is nothing I can do that you already haven’t done.
Best wishes,
Angela
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The exact same story happened to me and in living in France. I wonder how many thousand people are victims of this system – a collective legal lawsuit would be great and I’d join without any hesitation. There’s not even a bill, no contract, no way to know how the amount is calculated… so f*** illegal for french law as well 😦
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Thanks for your comment Cyril! I am sure many thousands of people are victims of the system. I hope a lawsuit will start some day and if it does, I will happily be a part of it too.
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Hey! Same thing happened to me too (I’m from Slovakia). I bought premium subscription for 3 euros month ago because I had non-stop emails coming that somebody mentioned me in a paper or whatsoever. Bought it, a month went by, I expected some email if I want to continue in subscription (got none), and later today they charged me 79 euros for whole year!!! I mean, my fault I didn’t check it properly, but every subscription I had for like a “trial period”, they ask me if I’m satisfied and want to continue in subscription. They just charged me (saying it again) after one month subscription, 79 euros for whole year. Did any of you guys got your money back after giving a complaint? Thank you for your answers in advance.
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Hi Emil,
Yes, I received some money back from them–the last charge they had for the year in advance they refunded after a major complaint and filing also with BBB.
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