Academia.edu : Another Review
When I am wrong, I do not hesitate to admit it. And this is the case with my views on the excellent site of Academia.edu . A few months ago I wrote a not so positive article on its operation. I was in Greece back then and the speed of the connection with the site was so low that I have not even managed to inspect its innermost pages. When I complained about it, some researchers answered that they never used it anyway and that they only checked out PHD Comics. At about the same time, the Academia.edu people contacted me to find out more about the problem. I described it to the best of my abilities and then I dismissed the site as another bankrupt platform. I have never been so wrong.
A few weeks ago I decided to give Academia.edu another fighting chance. I logged into the site, became a member, built a rudimentary profile and started following people. Within the space of a few hours I easily found around 70 academics, whose research I was interested about, and at least 35 journals. The search has been easy and straightforward. And so was the uploading of my articles. Some of them were already up and running, before I even stepped into the site, and they just needed my approval! I actually found this a very impressive application. But most impressive of all was the fact that a substantially large number of my colleagues were already members and they welcomed me accordingly!
Apart from the artistic design of the site, which does not please me, I have no other criticisms for the time being. But then, this is just a matter of personal taste. Therefore, I would like to recommend strongly Academia.edu to all of my colleagues, who are not already members. Please join, and let me see your research!
Apart from Academia.edu you can also find me at the Facebook page “Love of History” (it is different from the blog, though I advertise most of my posts there) and my twitter account c_katsari. Please, follow me!
I agree entirely – Academia is such a good way of communicating your research results, and really getting a good insight into colleagues’ latest research. Unlike facebook, it does not become too private – you are neither informed of relationship status nor of latest dinners. And all in one place – no need to navigate around complicated departmental websites that are designed to attract students, and not to link academics. The tree folder structure of departments is extremely helpful to see who is where. I just wish that it would be more complete, and that there was some way of deleting incorrect information. For instance, Leicester lists 2 departments, one for Archaeology, one for Archaeology and Ancient history. Clearly, this is rather silly – I have informed Academia per e-mail and will be curious to see if they fix it. But other than that, excellent. I can only echo Constantina – please join!