Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig academicworks.com. NS
Answer
academicworks.com. 5 NS ns-1180.awsdns-19.org.
academicworks.com. 5 NS ns-630.awsdns-14.net.
academicworks.com. 5 NS ns-277.awsdns-34.com.
academicworks.com. 5 NS ns-1968.awsdns-54.co.uk.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0