[INDOLOGY] Discussing Academia.edu

Thu Jan 26 16:56:41 UTC 2017

I concur with Dominik and Audrey. Especially in our field, if I relied on university open access sites or some of the other sites that Bond mentions, I would not be alerted to scholarship done at Indian universities or universities in China or that done by scholars unaffiliated with any university. Scholarship can become something of an echo chamber. My own scholarship has benefited enormously from my daily email alerts to work from scholars whom I have never heard of working in places that I have never heard of.
-j

Joseph Walser

Associate Professor

Department of Religion

Tufts University

________________________________
From: INDOLOGY [indology-bounces at list.indology.info] on behalf of Audrey Truschke via INDOLOGY [indology at list.indology.info]
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2017 11:47 AM
To: Dominik Wujastyk
Cc: Indology
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Discussing Academia.edu

I concur with Dominik on the valuable features of academia.edu<http://academia.edu>. I would add that I find the sins of academia.edu<http://academia.edu> quite minor compared to those of the large for-profit companies that own scholarly journals. We all publish in journals owned by Springer, John Wiley & Sons, and other commercial scholarly publishers that make significant profit margins off of our research, usually after taking the copyright and putting our work behind paywalls.

If one wants to protest the commercialization of academic work and such, it seems that journals are the place to start.

Audrey

Audrey Truschke
Assistant Professor
Department of History
Rutgers University-Newark

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 11:20 AM, Dominik Wujastyk via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info<mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> wrote:
Many of us use Academia.edu as a shop-window for our publications and our academic identity.

There was a piece by Sarah Bond published in Forbes on Monday<http://www.forbes.com/sites/drsarahbond/2017/01/23/dear-scholars-delete-your-account-at-academia-edu/#39e520de2ee0> this week that raises a number of criticisms of Academia.edu, and recommends deleting your Academia.edu account.

I've read Bond's piece carefully, and I find its arguments extremely weak.  I don't wish to do a point-by-point rejoinder here.  But I do want to signal to colleagues that Bond's alarmist critique of Academia.edu is something that I personally will ignore.

I remain very happy with Academia.edu, while recognizing that there are some issues that require vigilance and discussion.  I have written to Richard Price the founder of Academia.edu and a former Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, more than once in the past, and he has always answered personally and discussed my concerns seriously.  Similarly with other staff members.  The areas where Academia.edu might need to watch its step are areas that apply to all other similar services.  The benefits that Academia.edu offers its users are substantial, for a combination of hosting research, for subject-specific awareness alerts, for networking, and for analytics.  I see no competitor out there that quite offers the same ecosystem with the same combination of benefits.

Best,
Dominik Wujastyk

--
Professor Dominik Wujastyk<http://ualberta.academia.edu/DominikWujastyk>
,

Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
,

Department of History and Classics<http://historyandclassics.ualberta.ca/>
,
University of Alberta, Canada
.

South Asia at the U of A:

sas.ualberta.ca<http://sas.ualberta.ca/>

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