Academia.edu and its problems – Archaeoinformatics

"Academia.edu. Who doesn’t know it? By now this “facebook for academics“ is one of the first places students search for literature. Well known professors put their stuff there, you can find whole PhD-dissertations, loads of articles by almost anyone in any (archaeological) field. It is easy to “follow” someone and to get a message if they put something new online, you see recommendations and and and… and it is free and for everyone! Great, no? Sadly, no. There are a number of problems. Those of us, who’ve been using academia.edu for a longer period have witnessed some changes. We now receive loads of spam, inviting us to upgrade. In the beginning, every user was treated like any other, but now you can upgrade to “Academia Premium” if you want… if you want to pay, of course. Academia Premium offers you the great opportunity to see the rank of the person who downloaded your article, who “used your name” (which is, by the way, quite a joke, if you’re named “Schmidt”), you can create a personal website, use a full text search of the documents archived at academia.edu, and see analyses on your work "