Academia.edu Crosses 5M Users And Acquires Plasmyd, A Search Engine For Research Papers | Networld Interactive
abernard102@gmail.com 2014-04-12
Summary:
"Academia.edu, a social networking platform for academics that’s looking to change the way scientific research is shared, just acquired Plasmyd, a search engine and discussion platform for research papers.
It’s all part of CEO Richard Price’s plan to change the way peer review is done online. Plasmyd has more than 60 million papers indexed, and every page has its own research abstract and an area for comments.
He’ll retire Plasmyd’s brand and incorporate its search engine and commenting system into Academia.edu’s platform. He is also bringing on the bootstrapped company’s two founders into Academia.edu for a mix of stock and cash. (Incidentally, Price first learned about them on TechCrunch.)
His belief is that opening discussion of research to a broader audience beyond the handful of reviewers that a typical scientific journal handpicks will allow both errors and high-quality work to get surfaced faster ... As for Academia.edu, it just crossed 5 million registered users, which makes them larger than competitors like Benchmark-backed ResearchGate and Mendeley, which was recently acquired by research giant Elsevier. Oh, and they also recently picked up a $11.1 million growth-stage round led by Khosla Ventures ..."