Research platform Mendeley acquires research social network SciLife

LONDON, Aug. 16, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Consolidation in the research networking space continues: Mendeley, a London-based research collaboration platform with 1.9 million users globally, today announced its acquisition of SciLife, one of the longest-running social networks for researchers in Europe.

SciLife was created in 2007 by computer and life scientists from the universities of Heidelberg, Mannheim, and Lausanne to make collaboration in research easier. The award-winning platform received funding from the German Federal Ministry of Economics, helped kickstart major research collaboration projects, and quickly gained adoption at prestigious research institutions in Germany.

However, after finishing their PhDs, SciLife's founding team members decided to focus on careers in consulting and research management instead. Yet, they also wanted to find a solution for SciLife's active users - primarily for the research institutions that use customized installations of SciLife to organise large-scale collaboration projects.

Dr. Kai Uhrig, one of SciLife's co-founders and now a consultant at McKinsey, said: "With this acquisition, we've found the best possible home for our users. Mendeley is hands-down the most innovative company for online research collaboration. They have built a global community that is making science more open, and we're excited to see how they will keep transforming research with their unique approach to academic data."

Dr. Victor Henning, CEO and co-founder of Mendeley, high-fived Dr. Uhrig and added: "It made perfect sense to add SciLife's users to our community, particularly to join up our users at the Max Planck society, which is already Mendeley's biggest userbase in Germany. The majority of the researchers on our site are based at American and British universities - but since Mendeley's three founders are German, we are personally excited to have more German academics join our platform."

As of today, SciLife does not accept further user registrations. Existing user data and research projects will be imported to Mendeley. The acquisition amount was not disclosed.

Mendeley (http://www.mendeley.com) is a global research collaboration platform and academic database. Mendeley's desktop, mobile and web applications help people to organize, share, and discover new research. Since its launch in 2009, Mendeley has grown to 1.9 million users, who have collectively uploaded more than 270 million documents. The Mendeley API (http://dev.mendeley.com) powers more than 240 exciting new third-party applications that are making science more social and open.

Along the way, Mendeley has picked up awards like "Start-Up of the Year" at the 2009 Plugg Conference, "Best Social Innovation Which Benefits Society" at the 2009 TechCrunch Europe Awards, "Start-Up Most Likely To Change The World For The Better" at the 2010 Guardian Activate Summit, "Best Start-Up in Education " at the 2011 Telegraph 100, the Microsoft/Sunday Times "Tech Track 100" Award 2011, and the Microsoft Award for Cloud Computing at the 2012 ScienceBusiness ACES Awards. Mendeley press photos are available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mendeley/sets/72157630652171616/

SciLife is a research networking platform that is mapping the scientific landscape. It was founded in 2007 by Dr. Aaron Lindner, Dr. Kai Uhrig, Dr. Babak Hosseini (University of Heidelberg), Dr. Henryk Gerlach (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne), and Felix Roser (University of Mannheim).

For more information, contact:
Dr. Victor Henning, CEO / Co-Founder Mendeley
[email protected], +44 7515 963435

Dr. Kai Uhrig, Co-Founder SciLife / consultant at McKinsey
[email protected]

SOURCE Mendeley