Academia.edu

I love this app, it is amazing and very resourceful when finding things that you will not normally find in a google search engine,i find things that i been looking for a very long time and ever since last year i have learned so much, i would renew my subscription and pay 200$ a year if i had too,Academia is a app that is neccessary in my life, it is something that makes research what it should be,accessible to all who seek and want to know things,learning is what i never get tired of and knowledge is power...

Although the service itself is excellent, the app itself is problematic in terms of ableist assumptions. Zooming in can only be accomplished in portrait mode; in landscape mode one is stuck with whatever zoom level one has in portrait mode. As most phones are rectangular, this means it is impossible to get the text to fit the screen in landscape mode without repeatedly switching into portrait mode and zooming in and out until one happens upon the proper fit. Additionally, it is impossible to scroll with your left hand in landscape mode; scroll functionality is limited to the right side of the screen. This makes the app virtually unusable by academics who happen to be left-handed or are otherwise limited in range of motion movements. Such lack of accessibility on a platform which aims to improve access to research and academic information is a barrier to those who fail to occupy the societally established hierarchy of “right handed” and “able bodied.” I would give the app one star if it weren’t such a stellar service otherwise. Very disappointed with their subpar programming, lack of accessibility, and ableist GUI design.

Today, when academics are being faced with the loss of control over their intellectual property, at a time when faculty have no collective bargaining power, and ruinous technology transfer requirements are built into tenure-track contracts, the only way to ensure independence from being used as idea-horse to further the financial enrichment of corrupt university interests (predatory administrators who do not fulfill their obligation to guard the independence of basic research) only wide-ranging and free-access dissemination of new ideas, that must be tested in the public realm by the widest possible critical audience, we depend on applications like this one to keep freedom alive. And to drive the next generation of independent researchers. Universities were created to protect and promote basic research! Not to make cash-cows out of out best and most brilliant! Keep publishing freely and independently to fulfill the promise to mankind that science makes to respect but not to obey the Popes, and kings, and voracious Provost's. We pay you to protect us! We ARE science! Remember. The next auto-da-fe will have your name on it.