I’ve registered for a page on Academia.edu, and accepted the site’s offer to automatically scrape the Web and create my publications list. Worked fine, I think it got most everything — but then again, I keep a complete list of publications here on my own site.

But what Academia.edu also found was a PDF file of an old chapter, published in a book in 2001. A PDF even I didn’t have. According to the link address, it’s stored on the Academia.edu servers. Who put it there?

I have the copyright to my own work, and I have never approved of this publication. Don’t get me wrong,  I think it is fine that the paper is there. I believe in open access, and I try to put all my research writings online. But Academia.edu, or any other web site, can’t just publish whatever without asking the authors.

I wonder what happened.