I deleted my Academia.edu account and removed the link from my website. They recently moved to a paid model with several problems. Unfortunately, they started charging a lot of money, offered no student discount, and removed access to valuable analytical information we could previously see. It really bothered me, but I had decided having a platform to share my work made it ok. Well, I decided to delete my account after seeing some blog posts from other academics. People like me provide them content for free and drive visitors to their site. They now unfortunately want to charge us for the privilege. I understand that running the website takes money. However, they could make the site free for (or even pay!) content providers and charge readers.
Video games make billions of dollars from micro-charges. This is a model they could apply, rather than the old-fashioned subscription model. But for now, I don’t want to participate in a model that takes advantage of my work. I’ll think of another way to share with those who are interested.
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