[MTC Global] Forbes~ Dear Scholars, Delete Your Account At Academia.Edu | College & Education

"As privatized platforms like Academia.edu look to monetize scholarly writing even further, researchers, scientists and academics across the globe must now consider alternatives to proprietary companies that aim to profit from our writing and offer little transparency as to how our work will be used in the future.

In other words: It is time to delete your Academia.edu account.

At first glance, Academia.edu looks like a win-win situation. The platform allows users to create a profile, upload their work, tag certain interests and then to tap into large networks of people with like research interests among the almost 47 million users from around the globe. But looks--and names--aren't always what they seem.

It Is Not A 'Real' .edu

First and foremost? That web address is more than a little deceptive. As Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Associate Executive Director and Director of Scholarly Communication at the Modern Language Association (MLA) remarked on her blog, 'the first thing to note is that, despite its misleading top level domain (which was registered by a subsidiary prior to the 2001 restrictions), Academia.edu is not an educationally-affiliated organization, but a dot-com, which has raised millions in multiple rounds of venture capital funding.' Historian Seth Denbo probably said it best when, almost a year and a half ago, he warned scholars that they were providing free data to a for-profit company rather than participating in an open-source, non-profit often associated with .edu domains."