Query: Academia.edu "premium": worthwhile, or scam?

Justin Jaron Lewis Discussion

I have found academia.edu a very useful (and free) website for sharing my research and following the work of colleagues in Jewish Studies and beyond. Recently, it has begun sending me emails with the enticing subject heading, "We found the name 'Justin Jaron Lewis' mentioned in 874 papers." Clicking on the link to view these many mentions or citations takes me to a sign-in page for a "premium" service, which costs money.

Sadly, I don't believe I have been mentioned in 874 papers. So I am inclined to see this premium service as fraudulent and certainly not worth my money. But I would like to know whether any of you, colleagues, have signed up for this service and whether its "mentions" listing is, in fact, accurate.

Justin Jaron Lewis

6 Replies

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If you have an unusual name, it is possible that many of the citations may be genuine. But there is the worry that Academia are just picking up names, without regard to whether or not you are the John Smith who wrote a specific article. I discovered that my name was cited in many publications which I had not written, because the name N. Collins is pretty common.
Academia should let you have one look for free, and you can then see if the citations are genuine and proceed from there. Otherwise, there are other methods to use.
Nina Collins

I have given up on them. You cannot imagine how many Joshua Schwartz's there are in academia and the same goes for Joshua J. Schwartz. Good for my statistics, if I cared, but I am tired of weeding out stuff that is not mine.

As a post-script to my previous reply to this query, I would add that I was once in correspondence with an American scholar, whose name appeared as the author of a two-page spread in a popular Sunday newspaper on a topic that was of common interest. I wrote to my contact congratulating him. He replied that he had not written the article - it had been written by someone of the same name. However, he - my contact - would be happy to add the article to his CV. On that basis, I could claim authorship of quite a few scholarly papers, whose content I know nothing about.
Nina Collins

Thought it strange that 142 were interested in my doctoral thesis on the Shofar, so went ahead and paid my money only to find twas not I.
Try and get your much needed money back--no chance, an expensive lesson.

Rabbi Dr Richard Newman

I simply must defend academia.edu, which is the best thing that is happened (for me anyway) in academia in the four decades that I have been in the field. academia.edu allows me to reach a very large and diverse audience around the world. Contacts that I have made by way of the site have supplied me with rare manuscripts that I could not have obtained otherwise, and invited me to contribute to various projects; I have also learned by way of the site of people whom I could invite. The "sessions" have proven an invaluable source of feedback, and I cite sessions in my published work. Finally, with "peer review", in my experience, degenerating into a form of censorship, and a way to impose on an author views or perspectives that s/he does not hold, to prevent criticism of some and force citation of others, academia.edu is in my view now the prime forum for the free (in both senses of the word) dissemination of research.
Yes, the many e-mails with outrageous statistics are annoying, but then so are many other features of our digital world--including, if I may say so, the need to log in to h-net in order to post here. Academia.edu provides an excellent, free service, but someone has to pay the salaries of their staff. Monetization means advertising.