I have long, long since unsubscribed from all e-mails from academia.edu, and I’ve very largely ignored it for years. I‘ve certainly never dabbled with the “pro” version. I did upload copies of IFL and IGT when I had recovered the copyright, and later replaced the old TYL Guide. But otherwise I’ve kept my presence there pretty minimal and not used the site at all.
However, I was alerted recently to the fact that a (very) old version of my notes of category theory were still being downloaded from there. So I thought I should either replace those notes or perhaps just remove myself from academia.edu (as I had got the impression that it really isn’t in favour).
I was a bit staggered to find, then, that despite the non-activity on my part and despite still having only eight live pieces there, the site reports 175K “views” over the years. I’m pretty sceptical. But I did find hundreds of recent messages from downloaders that I’d not acknowledged (apologies, then, to those who thought I was just being rude!).
So I’ve decided to keep my profile there for the moment. But is academia.edu really much used these days? What do people use instead, if anything?
I’ve grown annoyed by their spammy behavior and their fake citation notifications and deleted my account.
Yes, I quite agree about the spam-style nagging (which is why I signed off all their emails). I’m inclined on balance to leave some PDFs there, though, because I get the impression that various readers — perhaps not regular university students, say –do visit the site and find the access it provides to PDFs useful.
as someone only trying to read papers, i’ve had nothing but trouble from them, making a new account every time and coming back to find it’s been banned…
Academia.edu has recently added a “community” section which allows for more discussion and interaction. It’s a β trial so I don’t know if everyone can read this example link ☞ https://www.academia.edu/community/5k4z9V
Regards.
Jon
https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry