Academic research has been one of the first areas to be exposed to the digital revolution. The reform that has marked the passage of academic
governance from the Humboldtian university system to the neoliberal university in managerial and busoness terms, made use of a series of
mechanisms aimed at monitoring and evaluating individual performance on an ongoing basis, tracing every interaction taking place in the academic
environment and in the outside world. Drawing inspiration from the work of Deborah Lupton, Inger Mewburn and Pat Thomson, The Digital
Academic: Critical Perspectives on Digital Technologies in Higher Education (2017), this paper looks at the digital self of contemporary academics.
Using digital platforms such as Academia.edu, Linkedin, Googlescholar, University e-repositories, SlideShare, Content aggregator tools, digital
academics can increase their daily interactions and the impact of their research. More than being interaction tools, these tools transform the academics
into digital individuals whose performance is constantly monitored until they find themselves prisoner of a growing "dataveillance" (Lupton,
Mewburn and Thomson, 2017). In this context, the question concerns not only the impact of digital technologies on the quality of contemporary
research, but also the impact of digital surveillance on the living and working conditions of contemporary academics, at a time where the tensions,
conflicts and malaise that inhabit the neoliberal university have become ever more manifest