In view of the current discussion taking place over Academia.edu’s introduction of an ‘article recommendation charge’, and the subsequent #DeleteAcademiaEdu hashtag (https://twitter.com/hashtag/deleteacademiaedu?f=tweets&vertical=default&src=hash), we thought you might be interested in this:
Last month The Centre for Disruptive Media (http://disruptivemedia.org.uk/) at Coventry University organised a symposium on academic social networking platforms called ‘Why Are We Not Boycotting Academia.edu?’ Chaired by Janneke Adema (Coventry University, UK) speakers included Pascal Aventurier (INRA, France), Kathleen Fitzpatrick (MLA/Coventry University, US), Gary Hall (Coventry University, UK), and David Parry (Saint Joseph University, US).
The videos from this symposium are now online at:
https://archive.org/details/Boycottingacademiaedu
The event addressed the following questions:
- Why have researchers been so ready to campaign against for-profit academic publishers such as Elsevier, Springer, Wiley-Blackwell, and Taylor & Francis/Informa, but not against for-profit platforms such as Academia.edu ResearchGate and Google Scholar?
- Should academics refrain from providing free labour for these publishing companies too?
- Are there non-profit alternatives to such commercial platforms academics should support instead?
- Could they take inspiration from the editors of Lingua (now Glossa) and start their own scholar-owned and controlled platform cooperatives for the sharing of research?
- Or are such ‘technologies of the self’ or ‘political technologies of individuals’, as we might call them following Michel Foucault, merely part of a wider process by which academics are being transformed into connected individuals who endeavour to generate social, public and professional value by acting as microentrepreneurs of their own selves and lives?
For more on this symposium see: http://disruptivemedia.org.uk/why-are-we-not-boycotting-academia-edu/