SHAREABLE STUDIES: Academia.edu, a social media platform for sharing academic research, has raised $16 million in a Series C round led by Tencent Holdings. Social Discovery Ventures also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total amount raised to $33.8 million, according to data on crunchbase.
The announcement follows Academia.edu’s recent launch of a free mobile app, where users can find and bookmark academic papers.
Founded in 2008, Academia.edu started with the goal of making all scholarly research available for free online. It has since grown to claim 75 million users on its website, which boasts more than 23 million pieces of research.
In 2017, Academia.edu rolled out a paid subscription service that includes paywalled services like an advanced search option. The subscription also allows paying users to see who has visited their profile or read their papers—or get notified any time their work is cited or mentioned on the site.
That paid model has led many academics to grow skeptical of the for-profit company’s ambitious efforts to disrupt the academic publishing industry. Some professors have called on academics to ditch the site altogether, saying that the company reinforces for-profit publishing models.
