Academia.edu Raises $11.1 Million Series B to Accelerate Scientific Progress
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) September 26, 2013 -- Academia.edu, the world’s largest community of scientists, today announces the company has raised $11.1 million in Series B funding led by Khosla Ventures, in which prior investors Spark Capital and True Ventures also participated. Khosla Ventures’ Ben Ling will join Academia’s board of directors and Vinod Khosla will join as an advisor.
Academia.edu’s mission is to accelerate scientific progress by making the world’s research open and accessible to everyone. Papers that were once delayed in 12-month publication cycles and then hidden under expensive paywalls are now available online instantly for free, where anyone can read or follow the latest research in any of the 800,000 separate research areas currently available on the site. Meanwhile, Academia.edu gives scientists a platform to upload their papers, measurably increase readership, and build powerful brands online.
The goal is to have every single science PDF ever written available for free on the internet and to build a network of scientists interacting with those papers that will change the face of peer review. 4.3 million researchers belong to Academia.edu, totaling 25% of the world’s 17 million academics, and 8 million people visit the site’s research index on a monthly basis. Meanwhile, 150,000 articles are uploaded to Academia per month, rapidly approaching the 160,000 articles that are published monthly in science as a whole.
“Last year, a 16 year old kid from Maryland named Jack Andraka discovered a revolutionary new test of pancreatic cancer that is 26,000 times cheaper than the current test and 400 times more sensitive,” said Richard Price, Founder and CEO of Academia.edu. “Jack brought beginner’s mind thinking into the field of pancreatic cancer and was able to introduce an idea that had eluded the established scientists in the field. How many more flashes of insight could we harvest if we made scientific literature open and accessible to the 2.5 billion people around the world who have a connection to the internet?”
“Technology has transformed media, communications, and commerce, and yet we still don’t have cures for Alzheimer's or cancer, we don’t have clean energy solutions operating at scale, and even fields like computing have realized only a fraction of their potential,” said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. “Academia is building a new infrastructure around scientific research that promises to reshape the way science is done, making it transparent, open, and collaborative, so that we can accelerate the pace of scientific innovation.”
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About Academia
Academia.edu is a platform for academics to share research papers. The company's mission is to accelerate the world's research. Academics use Academia.edu to share their research, monitor analytics around the impact of their research, and track the research of academics they follow. 4,308,424 academics have signed up to Academia.edu, adding 1,629,811 papers and 861,492 research interests. Academia.edu attracts over 8 million unique visitors a month.
Academia is on the web at http://www.academia.edu. Connect on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Academia.edu.
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Chrysta Olson, The Olson Company, 310-709-2555, [email protected]
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