Academia.edu is a social networking platform for academics.
Its mission is to provide a system for scientists to share their results, independently of the current journal system.
You can use Academia.edu to:
Academia.edu profiles often appear high in Google searches, so a profile can be a great way to promote your research.
Full-text publications uploaded to Academia.edu profiles are indexed by Google Scholar.
Before you create an Academia.edu profile or upload any publications you should consider the risks and issues involved, such as security, confidentiality and copyright.
Please note: even though its domain name has the extension: '.edu', Academia.edu is a for-profit company.
Researchers should be aware of their publishers’ policies on sharing their publications, ie. which version/s can be used and on which platforms they can be uploaded.
Publishers are increasingly vigilant about infringement of their copyright on these platforms. See for assistance How Can I Share It:
ARC and NHMRC advise against the use of platforms such as Academia.edu in the specific context of researchers meeting their OA policy compliance requirements, as they lack the necessary commitment the funders seek to long-term preservation, data reuse, publisher copyright requirements and end-user privacy afforded by institutional repositories.
UoM has an institutional repository – Minerva-Access – which takes care to observe publisher sharing policies and which, in terms of discovery via Google and Google Scholar, compares favourably with RG and Academia.edu
More information can be found on the Considerations and Risks tab of this guide: