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.