[Air-L] Elsevier and academia.edu

[Robert Ackland]

Hi List,

Interesting discussion.  I agree with statement below: "It seems to me that the question shouldn't be whether or not Academia.edu treats us well (or treats us better than commercial publishers), but whether Academia.edu is really the best we can do? I might be a hopeless optimist, but I think we can do better."

My main issue with academia.edu is that it appears to be yet another walled garden.

This is a bit off topic, but I also didn't like their feature (I'm sure used elsewhere, but I first saw it with academia.edu) that when you search for someone on google and click the link to their academia.edu page, the person receives an email from academia.edu saying words to effect: "someone from X just searched for you on google", where X is the country.  I stopped clicking through to academia.edu when I realised this.

Rob

--

Dr Robert Ackland
Associate Professor and Deputy Director (Education)
Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute
Australian National University

homepage: https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/ackland-rj
project: http://voson.anu.edu.au<http://voson.anu.edu.au/>


On 09/12/13 13:42, Rex Troumbley wrote:

Hi all,

This has been an interesting and timely debate. I'll contribute by pointing
out that academics usually write for impact and not money, which allows
them to focus on obscure subjects or unpopular research topics rather than
on what sells. Unfortunately, we have allowed public gifts from the writers
and reviewers to be turned into commodities by groups who have added the
least to the process of producing knowledge. Peter Suber pointed out in his
excellent book on Open Access <http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/open-access><http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/open-access> that
some of the largest journal publishers earn higher profits than big oil
companies.

Perhaps too much energy has been wasted defending the peer-review process
or the value of editors (when they've never really been under attack) which
might have been better directed towards creating a commercial-free academic
commons. It seems to me that the question shouldn't be whether or not
Academia.edu treats us well (or treats us better than commercial
publishers), but whether Academia.edu is really the best we can do? I might
be a hopeless optimist, but I think we can do better.

Rex Troumbley, PhD Candidate
Department of Political Science
University of Hawaii at Manoa