Can you help?
Every day Academia.edu send me notification of up to seven mentions a day of my name being cited in academic papers by universities around the world since ‘Mystic Experiences of Reality’ was published in December.
Academia.net is a website claiming membership of over 15,000 universities, including Oxford, Berkeley, New York University, MIT.
They claim over 15,000 scholarly papers and books are submitted to their site every day and urge me to “Track your growing reputation,
see what academics are saying about you.”
They also claim over 70 million followers.
But when I enquire about details of the citations using my name the only reply I get is a standardised automatic reply that I can find the answer by paying a membership fee of over $112 a year. I see some scholars have criticised this marketing device. Apparently Academia.net used to sell reviews of scholarly works too.
In the meantime I am also getting almost daily notifications from them of recently published scholarly papers and books on my interest – mysticism, philosophy, metaphysics, psychology, (but so far none on physics’ dynamic contribution to the subject). I have downloaded some of these papers but on reading have deleted them as being the usual academic/scholarly cannibalisation of ancient and modern skirmishes on the mystery of the mystic phenomenon, nothing that takes the subject forward significantly. None of the scholars seem to have had the experience of MER.
My blog, on the other hand, mysticexperiences.net, seems to be uniquely outstanding for giving a significantly new mystic message that has nothing to do with the collective human condition. Is this a new development in the historic phenomenon of the mystic experience?
So what I’m asking you is if you know anything about the legitimacy of Academia.edu? Is it worth engaging? Thank you.
Mystical Experiences of Reality 
I am deeply skeptical. I too have been bombarded with emails from them from time to time claiming that my name has been quoted in x academic papers and that if only I will pay the toll, I will be let across the bridge and shown The Way!
I am afraid I remain ever more skeptical of the internet and businesses based on the internet.I can barely count the number of approaches I have had which have led nowhere. It is always people trying to sell me something or trying to get me to give something for no recompense.
By way of example one outfit in London asked me to give a three day seminar on finance. They charge people attending £2000 and yet I was expected to do it for nothing – for my own publicity apparently.
In all fairness I have never looked into academia.edu properly but I suspect they are the modern equivalent of the door to door encyclopedia salesman.
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I have been active on academia.edu for about three years. More than 1,000 faculty and graduate students have downloaded my ebook on comparative mysticism and it has not cost me a penny.
If I “upgrade to Premium” I can learn who has mentioned me in their papers. Frankly I don’t care. If they like what I have posted that’s nice. If they didn’t like it I prefer not to know.
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I think that is a fair attitude. Your ebook is free so there is no gain or loss to you financially. And like myself you do not care who has mentioned you or where so to upgrade would be a complete waste of money. To me this is a service I simply do not need. Like the 1001 other internet services I do not want or need.
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The ‘gain’ is the satisfaction that they are among the more than 70,000 who have read my book.
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Incidentally I share your views on many of these academic papers. It is exactly the same in the financial world. They can so often be drivel. A mishmash and repetition of what others have said.
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Well said, Anthony. I’m coming to the conclusion that mostly everything humans live by are suppositions. Yet most humans seem prepared to defend them even unto the death. There is nothing I can think of so far that most humans accept as the basis of their existence that is is true upon closer examination, eg: family (historically to this day the biggest unit of murder, mayhem, abuse, theft, deceit, torture, incarceration, incest, and violence known to man); male domestic abuse (despite the research evidence it is the female who commits most domestic abuse); religions (utterly manmade bogus); all political left wing ideologies that have failed in application ever since Ananias and Sephira of the Christian bible); love, (which in human reality is in fact lust, anger, greed, attachments and ego).
And on and on …
Is there anything humans hold most dear that is not complete bullsxx (but less useful than real bullsxx when the real bullsxx is used on the earth and applied to building primitive dwellings)?
Best wishes, Keith.
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I am puzzling more and more with these questions and regret to say I entirely agree with all your conclusions.The only thing that should matter to humans is food, shelter and medicine. But of course millions fail to get even that because of the cockeyed way our global society works.
I was thinking of the idiots who build super yachts and vast mansions, who drive enormous and vastly expensive cars, who devote their lives to collecting those little green sheets of paper we call money.
It is all so puny, of such ridiculous irrelevance and once you have come to that conclusion you are pretty well driven to self isolate because so much of society is so ridiculous with its petty snobbery and greed.
Would that I could sublime to a saner environment!
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Well Anthony, the thought has often occurred to me that while being human is an incurable disease, it is thankfully terminal. LOL.
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Academia.edu is very legitimate and a great way to reach many of the 42,915 followers of ‘Mysticism.” Is their cost of upgrading to Premium worth it? Not in my experience (LOL).
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Forty two thousand nine hundred and fifteen followers of “Mysticism” is impressive, Ron. Thank you. I’d like to introduce the Book and/or Blog to such a dedicated audience! So, do you think they would take individual posts from this Blog, or the whole Blog? Or do they only take formulaic academic papers in your experience?
I’m also grateful for your sceptical tip it’s not worth taking a paid membership – especially as they send me pdfs of genuine scholarly papers on mysticism and related subjects anyway.
On another tip, I checked with Google Scholar. Without asking me to join, Google Scholar produced several pages of academic papers with Hancock authors that unfortunately had nothing to do with me or mysticism. Perhaps Academia would give me the same list if I signed up with them. (BTW, they told me today ‘my’ citations have leaped to nearly 200 now).
Kind regards, Keith.
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Keith, I hadn’t heard of Google Scholar. I’ll take a look at it.
Look at the more than 30 papers which I have posted on academia. Most of them are abbreviated chapters from my ebook.
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Excellent, Ron. Your 30 posts from your book suggests I might able to do the same. Thank you.
Regards, Keith.
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