LOG INSIGN UP Our mission is to accelerate the world’s research 171,000,000+ registered users 29,000,000+ uploaded papers 31,000,000+ visitors per month About Academia Academia is a platform for sharing academic research. Academics have uploaded 28 million papers, and 31 million academics, professionals, and students read papers on Academia every month. Our Story Founder and CEO, Academia.edu Richard Price IDEA Richard Price, the founder of Academia.edu, had the idea for the company when finishing his PhD at Oxford in philosophy. As Richard was finishing his PhD, he decided he wanted to have a homepage where he could say “this is who I am; this is what I have been working on; here are my papers.” At the time, Oxford offered a few megabytes of space for personal websites, and you had to write your own HTML, and FTP files to the server yourself. Richard thought “there should be a one-click way of creating a homepage, and uploading papers. Having a homepage shouldn’t require technical ability.” Richard asked a few of his fellow graduate students, and they felt the same way. GROWTH In the early days, what mattered most of all was growth: growth in users and papers uploaded. In the first few months, we were growing at a linear rate. Some days 37 users would join, the next day 42, the next day 38. We made it to 50,000 users a year later, and someone posted on Facebook “Congratulations; here’s to 500,000 users.” Richard remembers thinking “wow, that is a lot. At a linear rate, that is going to take 10x the amount of time it has taken so far.” We started to figure out exponential growth, and we got to 500,000 users, and then quickly to 1 million users. Today 170 million users have joined Academia.edu, and around 140,000 people join Academia.edu each day. READ THE FULL ACADEMIA.EDU STORY Monthly signups to Academia.edu over time Open Access Academia’s goal is to ensure that every paper, ever written, is on the internet, available for free. 28 million papers have been uploaded to Academia.edu. We think there are ~100 million papers ever written, so we are ~28% of the way there. Distribution Academia’s goal is to build the fastest and most relevant paper distribution system in the world. Today Academia.edu’s algorithms make about 20 million paper recommendations a day. Peer Review Academia’s goal is to provide signals regarding the trustworthiness of papers, and the trustworthiness of individual claims within papers, on Academia.edu. Formats Academia’s goal is to enable the sharing of knowledge in novel and effective formats - video, short-form content, data-sets, code. MISSION The mission of Academia.edu is to accelerate the world’s research. Our goal is to speed up research in every domain - finding a solution to climate change; finding cures for diseases; evolving artificial intelligence. We want to accelerate research in all these fields, and others too. Our guiding philosophy is that people want: Research to be free Research that is relevant to be recommended to them Signals that help them evaluate the truth/falsity of what they are reading Research to be presented in the right format, for easy comprehension The end result is: Research is accelerated: research towards solving the world’s problems is accelerated. Research is democratized: everyone has access to it. Business Model Academia has a "Freemium" business model, providing free access to research for everyone and paid premium capabilities to subscribers. Subscribing to Academia Premium gives researchers access to advanced research discovery tools and gives authors enhanced analytics and impact tracking tools. Our 260,000+ premium subscribers cover the cost of hosting free research and pursuing our mission. Mentions Get notified when you’re cited, mentioned, referenced, thanked, or acknowledged by an author. Advanced Search Search the full text and citations of our millions of papers. Bulk download Download whole groups of related papers to jumpstart your research. Summaries Get summaries of papers & save time on research. Grants Find new fellowships and grants in your field. Search alerts Stay updated on your research with automatic reports of saved search queries. Profile Visitors See the university, title, and location of the people viewing your profile. Personal website Get a beautiful personal website powered by your Academia profile. Readers See who’s read your papers, learn about their research interests, and get in touch. The Reach of Academia.edu We have over 31 million visitors each month. People using Academia.edu include academics, professionals, and students. The pen is mightier than the key-board. The kids I teach are in a K-8 school. The school says pencils will be banned next year. I am looking for research to change that decision.” Teacher in the United States THE FIRST CHAPTER We have begun the project of making research open; distributed; verified; and available in new formats. We are proud of what Academia.edu has achieved so far. Most of the work lies in the future, and we find that inspiring. Watch a video of our Founder & CEO, Richard Price talking about Academia’s mission Meet the Team LEADERSHIP RICHARD PRICE Founder & CEO NATE SULLIVAN CTO YURI NIYAZOV VP of Engineering PAUL GU VP of Finance JASON KELLERMAN Chief Product and Growth Officer Hear from Academia.edu team members Academia attracts kind, thoughtful people, it has an amazing mission, and it has a rapidly growing business. These things make Academia an amazing place to work at! ZACH FOSTER Senior Product Manager People here genuinely believe in the mission and are always looking for ways we can improve both the company and the product. ISABEL ZHANG Software Engineer VIEW THE FULL TEAM Help accelerate the world's research. LIFE AT ACADEMIA.EDU Press Coverage April 4, 2019 Academia.edu and Zimride top San Francisco's recent funding news. READ MORE March 28, 2019 Academia.edu Raises $16M, Launches Mobile App for Researchers. READ MORE VIEW PRESS COVERAGE Investors We've raised $33.8 million from a range of investors OUR INVESTORS THOMAS LEHRMAN Co-founder of Gerson Lehrman Group MARK SHUTTLEWORTH Founder of Thawte and Ubuntu RUPERT PENNANT-REA Chairman of The Economist AboutPressBlogPeoplePapersAcademia LettersJob Board We're Hiring! Help Center Find new research papers in:PhysicsChemistryBiologyHealth SciencesEcologyEarth SciencesCognitive ScienceMathematicsComputer Science TermsPrivacyCopyrightAcademia ©2021