Reviews

Review Details

• Review fromDavid B

  Date: 07/11/2025

  1 star
  Misleading. They claim to have papers you have written, but they simply have documents with your name plugged into them. They offer a free trial, with a future subscription. When you cancel the subscription within the time limit specified in their terms and conditions, they will charge you anyways and refuse to refund unauthorized payments. Do not use this site, do not allow them access to any of your information.

• Review fromTugce O

  Date: 06/30/2025

  1 star
  I subscribed to Academia Premium in June 2024 for USD 8. Without any warning or notification, my subscription was auto-renewed in June 2025 for USD 75 more than 10 times the original price. I was not informed that my subscription would renew, that the price had drastically increased, or that I had any option to cancel or reject the new terms.I immediately contacted ******** to cancel and request a refund. They refused, stating that "refunds are not available for renewals." This is unacceptable no one should be charged over *****% more than the previous year without prior notice and clear consent.Their conduct is deceptive and violates basic consumer rights. Academias billing practices are predatory, especially for international users. I would not recommend subscribing until they establish transparent, ethical renewal procedures.

• Review fromFaolan T

  Date: 04/03/2025

  1 star
  I received an email informing me of changes to the *************** on 3/25, with the new subscription price ($299) buried under a long list of services. I immediately went to cancel autorenewal, and went through to a page prompting my reasons for cancelling. I selected, but apparently there were two additional prompt pages to fully cancel that I did not see. I never received an email reminder of the payment, nor a receipt that it had been paid. I found it on my bank statement. I have never changed my email preferences on their website and found that the only option opted out of was Premium payment emails - something I certainly never opted out of through my own volition. It seems to be the default when you enroll in premium. The price increase is almost 2x what it was the year before, not accounting for the fact that I enrolled at a discounted price. Absolutely vile lack of transparency and intentional exploitation of their client base.

• Review fromDava N

  Date: 02/05/2025

  1 star

  Dava N

  Date: 02/05/2025

  With certainty I cancelled auto-renew some time ago. I had subscribed with a special reduced offer. A few days ago I watched a $299 charge pop up in my email. I contacted them IMMEDIATELY using the web form to let them know. I got a form letter more or less saying too bad, jokes on you. Enjoy your subscription. I wrote back this was outrageously unfair, nothing to enjoy here and then I opened a dispute with my credit card. For one thing, they dont make it easy to cancel- room for error. They do clickbait by saying you were mentioned in a paper. Completely unscrupulous. Judging from reviews I am not alone in this. I wish there was a class action suit against them.

  Academia.edu

  Date: 02/07/2025

  Hi,Thanks for getting in touch with this frustration. We're sorry for any confusion! You can always learn more about our subscriptions in our terms of use (academia.edu/terms) to learn about our subscription terms, or update your support ticket with any other questions you may have about ********. Unfortunately, since you opened a dispute with your payment processor, we are not able to provide an exception to process a refund for this payment. We apologize for any confusion.

• Review fromGarth B

  Date: 10/02/2024

  1 star
  I was originally being charged $99 per year for a premium membership in 2021 which continued to be the rate 2022. In 2023 the fee was increased without notification to $173.00 which is a 75% increase. In 2024 the rate was increased without notification to $249.00 which is a 45% increase from the previous year and a 150% increase from the initial fee of $99. The fee was charged to my credit card on August ***************************************************************** September. I immediately cancelled the membership and requested a refund. I was informed they would not issue a refund since they sent a notice on August 6. I did not have an email from them about the increase so I requested a copy of the email with the full headers. They only sent the headers without a copy of the message or the message contents, without the actual message it cannot be confirmed what the notice truly was. I asked to have the matter referred to a manager for review and my request was refused. This is an unreasonable increase paired with poor communication, bad customer service and unacceptable refund policy.

• Review fromMark F

  Date: 04/16/2024

  1 star

  Mark F

  Date: 04/16/2024

  "Cancel auto-renewal" is a lie, it doesn't work all there other buttons work. They try stealing your money.

  Academia.edu

  Date: 04/18/2024

  Hi ****,So sorry to hear you had this issue! We do see on our end lots of users able to cancel auto-renew every day. We'd be happy to help you out further - just follow up with *****, our team member, in the support ticket you submitted. Thanks,Academia Support

• Review fromAngela S

  Date: 07/20/2023

  1 star
  Academia.edu is an organization that is supposedly offering citation information to academicians. They have a premium service, which allows you to see if indeed your paper was cited, or simply they found a name like yours, but the paper belongs to someone else. For this privilege that you can correct their findings, they charge you a hefty annual fee. The charges are on auto renewal. By law, in the US, prior to auto renewal, a company must notify the person about to be charged for that service ***** days prior to the renewal. This company doesn't ever send any notifications to members about the renewal or even to let them know that they have premium membership. Apparently I have been a member of this premium service since 2020 without my knowledge. I have been charged an annual fee of $99 since 2020 without any notification. This June, the auto renewal jumped to $173.50 and this amount showed up on my credit card as something unusual--this is a rather weird annual membership fee by an academic organization, you must admit. This was also the first time I noticed that I was charged for something I didn't buy. How come I didn't know I was charged before? Because I am a member of many academic organizations, academic journal subscriptions, etc., and the $99 annual fee went by unnoticed because it was common. Had they not changed their fee to something as odd as they did, I may not ever have noticed this membership charge! My fault! I totally accept that. I was never informed that I had a premium membership, never was notified about auto renewal, I never received a receipt or "your membership was renewed". No emails at all from the company for the near 4 years I had been a supposed premium member. They have broken their legal obligations because they never notified me before automatic membership renewal. Beware of being scammed! Cancel your membership if you have one.

• Review fromR. S

  Date: 04/21/2023

  1 star

  R. S

  Date: 04/21/2023

  Let's be honest, academia.edu, or ACADEMIA, *** is a seedy for-profit company masquerading as a non-profit promoting "open access" in higher education that just keeps getting worse. They continually devise more and more problematic ways to try to make $ off of our goodwill, personal information, and connections to others, often by tricking users into sharing such information without their knowledge. The only reason that ACADEMIA, *** can persist in their current capacity is because they have the ".edu" web address, and the only reason for this is that it was registered in **** before ".edu" was limited to educational institutions. They use problematic tactics that are nearly identical to the seediest data aggregation and "people searching" websites. For example, they create "profiles" for individuals that never registered or created them. These profiles often contain incorrect information, and if you want to correct the information individuals need to "take ownership over profiles", or perhaps spend an endless number of hours contacting the company and trying to plead your case. ACADEMIA, *** also tricks users into sending their colleagues endless barrages of emails without providing clear information that this will occur if you click "yes" instead of ignoring a prompt, or if a user agrees to include someone as a coauthor that is not registered. ACADEMIA, *** also keeps coming up with new obnoxious hoops for users to jump through to access our papers to squeeze additional personal information out of users. For example, you need to register a profile to gain access to our papers, and as of March 2023, they force users to take a survey and share personal information. The overwhelming majority of users are simply trying to either share their published work, or access the published work of others. see the 200+ and growing terrible reviews:********************************************************

  Academia.edu

  Date: 04/28/2023

  Hi RS,We're so sorry for all the frustration you've experienced with Academia. As we posted in your Trustpilot review, all papers on Academia can be downloaded for free. You should be able to skip past any prompts to pay. Additionally, Academia does not create accounts without user feedback or confirmation. We often find out users do not realize they have made an account or forgot about an account, and we're always happy to delete this account if we're contacting about it. If you have other questions, our support team will be happy to help: ************************************************************

• Review fromKevin S

  Date: 03/12/2023

  1 star

  Kevin S

  Date: 03/12/2023

  No way to unsuscribe to their relentless emails. No way to contact company Zero stars

  Academia.edu

  Date: 03/14/2023

  Hi *****,So sorry for this confusion and frustration! Please contact us here: ************************************************************ with the email address you would like to unsubscribe to and we will be happy to help. Academia Customer Support