'Open science' finds disruptive home in Academia.edu - San Francisco Business Times

"Richard Price isn’t one to rant — after all, his Ph.D. thesis at Oxford was on the philosophy of perception — but he’s got a beef with scientific research. Mind you, Price isn’t opining on the quality of work coming out of the world’s research institutions. Instead, the CEO of Academia.edu is floored by the way research is published and disseminated by those august, peer-reviewed — and costly — journals that are gateways in the publish-or-perish world of academic research. After all, the research is largely funded by tax dollars, Price said. Why should it cost hundreds or thousands of dollars for the public to see the results? It’s a problem looking for a disruption, Price said, and San Francisco’s Academia.edu, an open-science publishing site, may be the conduit. The company said Tuesday that the number of researchers using the site crossed the 10 million mark ..."