Should you upload your articles, presentations and further material online?
Reasons for not doing it:
- People might criticise you because they read your unfinished stuff (this of course only applies if you are considering to upload unfinished articles).
- It takes time, and you should rather use your time to write or read.
- Academia.edu, etc., are for-profit and one should rather not help them (however, they also retain a free version and moreover see No. 3 below).
- Are there other arguments I forgot?
Reasons for doing it:
- You can reach more people.
- You can interact with more people, especially scholars you would not meet at your usual conferences.
- You can reach people who would not be able to read your articles because they are not affiliated to a university and/or their university does not possess a library and/or their university’s library does not have access to the journals where you published.
I think that especially No. 3 is relevant and cannot but lead one to conclude that the ethically correct choice involves uploading one’s work. What do you think?
Now, if you agree with me, you’ll probably also have to consider a next question, namely what can one upload? Some things are safe to upload, namely:
- Articles, etc. for which you have retained the copyright (e.g., my book Adaptive Reuse, which was published open access).
- Articles, etc. for which the copyright has expired (usually after one or three years).
- Articles, etc. which you never published (e.g., my articles on intellectual intuition or on Hayagrīva).
- Articles, etc. which have been published and of which you could not retain the copyright, but of which you upload a pre-print version (e.g., my book on Duty and sacrifice).
The last case is the most complex one. What does “preprint” mean? I usually upload a version which is just mine, in the sense that it does not entail anything added by the journal’s (etc.) editors. No corrections, no formatting, no copy-editing, etc. I often discussed it with journals (etc.) and they were fine with it.
another reason to use Academia.edu is that it is an effective research-discovery service. It’s better than most others services such as Cambridge or Oxford press journal platforms, because they are ghettos, only serving people in the Cambridge or Oxford journals. Academia brings to your attention a wide range of publications relevant to your personal choices and keywords.
Thank you, Dominik. I, in fact, enjoy Academia.edu exactly because it made me virtually meet many interesting articles and people. A further question: Do you know any further legal details about uploading a pre-print version?
I personally think the advantages by far outweigh any disadvantages. I upload my articles to both, but I prefer ResearchGate, because (1) Academia.edu is Microsoft, which is an Evil Company, (2) more importantly, Academia.edu is really annoying with its urging that I should upgrade to their costly premium service (that offers me nothing I’m interested in).
It is only decent to upload things that are (or practically are) finished, and not drafts in varying degrees of sloppiness. Such sites should be seen as a form of online (re-) publishing.
Many of my old articles have appeared in journals that are not so widely subscribed to, and these sites are a valuable channel for dissemination. One article of mine, that appeared in a magazine in Delhi some thirty years ago and which I uploaded recently, has reportedly been downloaded nearly a thousand times already: so obviously there is a readership out there which otherwise would not have been able to read that particular article and perhaps would not have known at all that it exists.
The one matter that makes me hesitate to upload more is the legal issue: that often I do not know whether a former publisher will allow me to upload my old publications. I would have to contact the publisher in question to inquire, and often I find that a bit too much of a hassle.
There’s no link with Microsoft, as far as I know. Academia.edu raised funds from a range of venture capital backers; I think Khosla is one of the main ones.
In that case I take back that reservation. Apparently I conflated Academia.edu with a Microsoft site with a similar name.
Many thanks, Robert. Often, the copyright conditions are in the contracts themselves. I usually put my articles in a folder with the date in which the “quarantine” expires and I can upload them.
A further question: I see your point about Academia.edu being for profit, but are you sure that it belongs to Microsoft? Since when?
About ‘Microsoft’: see my previous reply to Dominik.
Your remark about contracts is sensible and efficient, and I think I will follow your example.
I have stopped sending my research to commercial journals. On the rare occasions where I have to, I won’t sign copyright transfers. The publishers normally acquiesce, and if they don’t, I walk.
Thanks, Dominik, especially given that you put much effort in publishing a different type of journal!
Apart from Academia.edu being a private company that one may not wish to hand one’s writings over too, it tries way to aggressively to sign people up who just want to read somebody else’s writing. The following quite accurately describes the experience I once had:
https://www.umsu.de/wo/2015/628
which resulted in an auto‐created account for myself that I did not want and that was almost impossible to delete again. I have to agree that individual websites or institutional repositories, where content is visible without login, are preferable.
Dear Stefan, thanks for contributing to the debate. My main problem with individual websites and one’s university’s repository is that Academia or Research Gate are much more a “one stop shop”, where you can find a lot starting from a keyword, whereas in order to find one’s articles from their private website one should have first known that they had written something interesting, looked for it, etc. Moreover, Academia and Research Gate facilitate interactions among scholars. In sum, I think that your proposal with PhilPapers has way more advantages. Why don’t you fully endorse it?
Indeed Academia.edu is annoyingly pushy, and it’s obviously in the data mining business, like all the other so-called ‘social media’ (Am I stupid, when I think that *all* media by definition are social?).
In my email client I have created a filter that immediately shreds all messages coming from Academia.edu. Thus I still have my account and can download stuff, and at the same time I am no longer annoyed. A different method is to create a separate folder to which the email client sends Academia messages, in case you want to glance at them now and then for FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).
PhilPapers is something to try out. I think I’ll do that.
I’m startled by your assertion that Academia.edu is in the “data mining business.” What is your evidence for this? I presume you mean something to do with processing and selling personal data for commercial purposes? I.e., beyond doing the analytical work to provide keyword-determined suggestions for reading, cross-indexing academic interests for the benefit of logged-in users. Please share what you know.
I never get *any* email from Academia.edu. So your experience puzzles me. However, I am a subscriber, so perhaps that’s it.
There is rather fine-grained control about what notifications one chooses to receive. Have you got them all turned off, and you still receive stuff?
https://www.academia.edu/settings#email-notifications
I’m a retired non-academic with many interests. I’m often happy to find an academic paper online.
Reading this post made me realize that a preprint might contain an error that I don’t know enough to even suspect.
I shouldn’t get too excited about what might be a typo without looking for corroboration.