Should This Be the Last Thing You Read on Academia.edu?(academia.edu)
academia.edu
Should This Be the Last Thing You Read on Academia.edu?
https://www.academia.edu/16959788/Should_This_Be_the_Last_Thing_You_Read_on_Academia.edu
5 comments
So the central argument seems to be that Academia.edu profits from the patterns of access and related metadata that academics generate as they do their daily work. Academia.edu then sells this data to private R&D companies to point them in the direction that the academics are moving.
Even after reading through this paper, I'm not convinced that this is inherently a bad thing. Many corporations (cough Elsevier cough) profit off the backs of publicly-funded academics in much more pernicious ways.
Now, if Academia.edu were allowing companies to purchase the specific page-views of specific researchers (or allows subsetting the data specifically enough to target one group with decent confidence), then that would be very damning. I suppose I should go re-read the privacy policy: https://www.academia.edu/privacy.
Even after reading through this paper, I'm not convinced that this is inherently a bad thing. Many corporations (cough Elsevier cough) profit off the backs of publicly-funded academics in much more pernicious ways.
Now, if Academia.edu were allowing companies to purchase the specific page-views of specific researchers (or allows subsetting the data specifically enough to target one group with decent confidence), then that would be very damning. I suppose I should go re-read the privacy policy: https://www.academia.edu/privacy.
While I'm sure there are antecedents, going as far back as Heinlein in the '50s, making use of the firehouse of information being produced by academics and researchers has been identified as a big problem. If Academia.edu can help with this, without doing objectively evil stuff, more power to them.
Centralisation of process isn't just about dollars for data. Yes, for the business model to work, the company has to gather a lot of data that it can look at all at once. But that's perfectly possible to do through a network of services, even services you don't own. See ad-servers.
Centralisation on the product level – that is, all activity happens on this particular piece of user facing software – is also a function of ease of use. If a thing is being accomplished by a distributed set of different interfaces, each with their own rules of the road, then there's significant pain for the end user in navigating all of that. In this way, good UX is naturally monopolistic.
Disclaimer: I briefly worked for Academia.edu a few years back.
Centralisation on the product level – that is, all activity happens on this particular piece of user facing software – is also a function of ease of use. If a thing is being accomplished by a distributed set of different interfaces, each with their own rules of the road, then there's significant pain for the end user in navigating all of that. In this way, good UX is naturally monopolistic.
Disclaimer: I briefly worked for Academia.edu a few years back.
Anyone have a link that doesn't require a signup?
Just scroll down, you'll be able to read the contents without a download.
[deleted]
I just had to scroll ...yet to read the thing though.
Yeah, took me a while to figure that out. The page resizes to fill 100% of your browser window, with the little "Read Paper (down arrow)" link a slightly different shade of gray vs the background. Kind of shady really.
Here's the solution. It's a steep climb.
Persuasive academics need to start convincing people with money to donate millions and millions to not-for-profit collaborations of universities and government research entities to start open research and open-source journals. Truly altruistic people need to start and run these journals, convinced of their mission of providing open research to all the world. They need to be motivated by the mission. The money needs to be there too. But given the choice between optimizing selling widgets for Amazon, or providing the world with free access to all research the world over... what job would you choose?
The gov't could support it too, but I'd rather their support go towards actual research than a collaboration. There's too much bureaucracy when you take money from the gov't.