Ah, the joys of prsonal recommendations

One of my discussion/assignment topics for students on Information Science at Meiji University has long been "Personalised Recommendations: Useful or Creepy". Lots of the academic publishers track what you read and try to recommend things. Due to my teaching at University of Tokyo being for students on Japan and East Asian studies, and on Environmental Science, I have been pulling up at least the abstracts and often the
full paper (via U=Tokyo subscription where Meiji doesn't have it) for lots of papers relevant to those topics. Particularly Environmental Science this semester because in teaching academic presentation and writing to the Env Sci students I've got them basing a presentation and a grant proposal on an existing paper, so of course i need to skim the paper to check the validity of their work. Not my field, but I can blag it well enough for the level needed. So, of course Science Direct, who track what I look at, have now started recommending Env Sci instead of Information Ethics papers to me.