Article:

Befreites Wissen. Academia.edu und die Zählbarkeit von Wissenschaft

Academia.edu is the most popular online platform and social network for scientists and academic research. Members can easily maintain their profiles and share academic articles via ‹upload› to the company's web servers. It is also widely used by many media scholars as part of their research practices. Academia.edu can be used to search and find research papers, and promises to increase the visibility and reputation of its users. Almost everything the platform promises works perfectly fine. It is an effective tool for the management of one's online presence as an academic. Nevertheless, it provokes criticism. The ambition of Academia.edu is to change the future of scientific research. By ways of extended networking and altered practices of publication, as well as through the implemented logics of rankings, impact metrics and ‹participatory surveillance›, the platform strives to become a key player for the future of the academic production of knowledge. It is about time that we discuss the inherent political dimension of these undertakings, particularly from the point of media theory and with attention to the entanglement of power, technology and knowledge.