Following widespread complaint of these takedown notices, Elsevier retracted their request, and academics were allowed to continue to post their publications.

[19][20] According to the University of Oklahoma libraries, when interacting with Academia.edu, users should keep in mind that "you are not the customer," but rather "you are the product that these services seek to monetize and/or 'offer up' to advertisers," that "you might be breaking the law," even if you are uploading your own work, and finally that "there are privacy implications," because a commercial site does not follow professional standards and "may share information about you".

[21] A critic, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, the director of scholarly communication at the Modern Language Association, said she found the use of the ".edu" domain name by Academia.edu to be "extremely problematic", since it might mislead users into thinking the site is part of an accredited educational institution rather than a for-profit company.

[24] In early 2016, some users reported having received e-mails from Academia.edu where they were asked if they would be interested in paying a fee to have their papers recommended by the website's editors.

[26] Other criticisms include the fact that Academia.edu uses a vendor lock-in model: "It's up to Academia.edu to decide what you can and can't do with the information you've given them, and they're not likely to make it easy for alternative methods to access".

[26] In December 2016, Academia.edu announced new premium features that includes data analytics on work and the professional rank of the viewers,[27] which have also received criticism.