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Best WordPress Plugins for Academic

8 plugins compared · Updated August 2026 · Academic

All Free only 8 Premium only

Choosing a WordPress plugin for academic comes down to a few things: whether it is still actively maintained, whether real users rate it well, and whether it does the specific job you need without dragging the rest of the site down.

We ranked 8 plugins using our WPScore, which weighs the user rating (adjusted for how many people actually rated it), how many sites run it, how recently it was updated, and which WordPress version it is tested against. 8 of them have enough public data to be scored; the rest are listed below the ranked block, clearly marked, rather than being given a number we cannot justify.

How this list is funded. Some links here earn us a commission if you buy. It costs you nothing extra, and it does not move anything up the list — the order comes from the WPScore, which is calculated from public ratings, install counts and update history. See the method.

At a glance

  1. 1. Educare Best overall 80/100
  2. 2. Commons In A Box 75/100
  3. 3. Scholar Publications Fetcher 69/100
  4. 4. Student Result or Employee Database 59/100
  5. 5. JP Students Result Management System 52/100
  6. 6. Academic Blogger's Toolkit 47/100
  7. 7. Footnotation 46/100
  8. 8. Side Matter 46/100
1 Educare
Best overall Free by FixBD

Educare

No. 1 Academic Students & Result Management system for WordPress. Educare helps you effortlessly publish and manage student results online.

4.6★
from 24 ratings
700+
active installs
Updated
Jun 2026
Tested to
WP 7.0.0
80

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
8 Side Matter
Free by setzer

Side Matter

Turns footnotes into sidenotes, magically aligning each note in the sidebar next to its corresponding reference in the text.

4.6★
from 13 ratings
100+
active installs
Updated
Jan 2014
Tested to
WP 3.7.41
46

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org