Spark Capital Funds Academia.edu to Make Research Social

Academic research operates on an entirely different calendar than the rest of the world, but maybe the pace would be sped up if researchers could more easily follow and share with one another. That’s the premise of Academia.edu, a social network that has three million monthly visitors and gets 3,000 new academic papers per day. It has now raised $4.5 million in funding, led by Bijan Sabet at Spark Capital. Competitors include the Benchmark-funded ResearchGate.