Academia.edu

Academia.edu
Type of business Private
Type of site
 Platform for sharing research papers
Available in English
Headquarters San Francisco, California
Area served Worldwide
Founder(s) Richard Price
Employees 23[1]
Website academia.edu
Alexa rank Decrease 956[2]
Registration Free
Users 36 million[3]
Launched September 2008
Current status Active

Academia.edu is a venture-capital funded private company that provides a social networking website for academics.[4][5] The platform can be used to share papers, monitor their impact, and follow the research in a particular field. It was launched in September 2008,[6] with 31 million registered users as of January 2016 and over 8 million uploaded texts.[7] Academia.edu was founded by Richard Price, who raised $600,000 from Spark Ventures, Brent Hoberman, and others.[8]

Open science

Academia.edu proclaims it supports the open science or open access movements and, in particular, instant distribution of research, and a peer-review system that occurs alongside distribution, instead of prior to it.[9] Accordingly, the company stated its opposition to the proposed (since withdrawn) 2011 U.S. Research Works Act, which would have prevented open-access mandates in the U.S.[10]

However, Academia.edu is not an open access repository and is not recommended as a way to pursue green open access by Peter Suber and experts, who instead invite researchers to use field-specific repositories or general-purpose repositories like Zenodo.[5][11]

Reception

Many academics are happy about the increased publicity their research can garner due to the website, but some are worried about the effect on research and science in general, especially since Academia.edu refuses to make its business model public.[4] TechCrunch remarked that Academia.edu gives academics a "powerful, efficient way to distribute their research"[12][13] and that it "will let researchers keep tabs on how many people are reading their articles with specialized analytics tools", and "also does very well in Google search results".[12] Academia.edu seems to reflect a combination of social networking norms and academic norms.[14] In the summer of 2015, the blogging platform was removed.

Months after its acquisition of Academia.edu rival Mendeley, Elsevier sent thousands of takedown notices to Academia.edu, a practice that has since ceased following widespread complaint by academics, according to Academia.edu founder and chief executive Richard Price.[15][16]

Domain name

Academia.edu is not a university or institution for higher learning and so under current standards it would not qualify for the ".edu" top-level domain. However, the domain name "Academia.edu" was registered in 1999, prior to the regulations requiring .edu domain names to be held solely by accredited post-secondary institutions. All .edu domain names registered prior to 2001 were grandfathered in, even if not an accredited post-secondary institution.[17][18]

A critic, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, the Director of Scholarly Communication at the Modern Language Association, said she finds the use of the ".edu" domain name by Academia.edu to be "extremely problematic", since the domain name might mislead users into thinking the site is part of an accredited educational institution rather than a for-profit company.[18]

On its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company uses the legal name Academia Inc.[19]

Financial history

In November 2011, Academia.edu raised $4.5 million from Spark Capital and True Ventures.[8] Prior to that, it had raised $2.2 million from Spark Ventures and a range of angel investors including Mark Shuttleworth, Thomas Lehrman, and Rupert Pennant-Rea.[8] In September 2013, the company raised $11.1 million from Khosla Ventures, True Ventures, Spark Ventures, Spark Capital and Rupert Pennant-Ream,[20] bringing its total equity funding to $17.7 million.[19][21]

References

  1. ↑ "About". Academia.edu. Retrieved 2016-05-15.
  2. ↑ "Academia.edu on Alexa". Retrieved 14 August 2016.
  3. ↑ Academia.edu. "Hiring". Retrieved 2016-07-22.
  4. 1 2 Some academics remain skeptical of Academia.edu
  5. 1 2 Fortney, Katie; Gonder, Justin (2015-12-01). "A social networking site is not an open access repository". OSC. Retrieved 2016-07-22.
  6. ↑ Cutler, Kim-Mai. "Academia.Edu Overhauls Profiles As The Onus Falls On Researchers To Manage Their Personal Brands". Techcrunch. Retrieved 2012-10-19.
  7. ↑ Academia.edu. "About". Retrieved 2016-01-25.
  8. 1 2 3 "Academia.edu | CrunchBase Profile". Crunchbase.com. Retrieved 2012-02-22.
  9. ↑ Richard Price (2012-02-05). "The Future of Peer Review". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2012-02-22.
  10. ↑ Richard Price (2012-02-15). "The Dangerous "Research Works Act"". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2012-02-22.
  11. ↑ Peter Suber (2016). "Open Access book §10 self help".
  12. 1 2 "Academia.edu Raises $4.5 Million To Help Researchers Share Their Scholarly Papers". TechCrunch. 2011-11-30. Retrieved 2012-02-22.
  13. ↑ "Academia.edu – $4.5M in Funding, 3M Unique Monthly Visitors – Can They Change Science Publication?". Singularity Hub. 2011-12-11. Retrieved 2012-02-22.
  14. ↑ Thelwall, M.; Kousha, K. (2014). "Academia.edu: Social network or Academic Network?". Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 65 (4): 721. doi:10.1002/asi.23038. Preprint
  15. ↑ Parr, Chris (June 12, 2014). "Sharing is a way of life for millions on Academia.edu". Times Higher Education. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  16. ↑ Howard, Jennifer (December 6, 2013). "Posting Your Latest Article? You Might Have to Take It Down". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  17. ↑ "edu Policy Information". Net.educause.edu. 2001-10-29. Retrieved 2012-02-22.
  18. 1 2 McKenna, Laura (17 December 2015). "The Convoluted Profits of Academic Publishing". The Atlantic.
  19. 1 2 "A social networking site is not an open access repository". University of California Office of Scholarly Communication. Retrieved 7 July 2016.
  20. ↑ "About Academia.edu". Academia.edu. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
  21. ↑ "Academia.edu". Crunchbase. Retrieved 7 July 2016.

External links

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