​Academics Knock Academia.edu’s Premium Account and Paywalled Search Features | EdSurge News

"The website has set up a paywalled 'advanced search' option, accessible only through Academia.edu’s new premium subscription, which costs $9 per month or $99 per year. The feature allows paying users to find exact keyword matches within the full-text of papers on Academia. Without a subscription, the website’s search engine still retrieves articles with headlines containing the searched keywords.

While the website’s existing features—including uploading and downloading articles, peer-review sessions and recommendations—remain free, the company has received backlash for its new pricing model.

'Open access to an ocean of articles without the ability to search through them is meaningless,' a self-described academic mathematician wrote in a recent Hacker News thread started by Ben Lund, chief technology officer at Academia.edu. The discussion initiated in response to an article that appeared on Diggit Magazine by a university lecturer (and the publication's editor-in-chief) who discovered the blocked feature while searching for materials for his students."