In 2017, a group of developers at White City spotted a problem. They noticed that the students and scientists around them struggled to stay afloat in a sea of academic literature. With over three million research papers published every year, they saw how hard it was for busy academics to keep up with studies in their field.
Their idea was simple: a new app for researchers, collating academic papers and providing a platform for discussion. With access to White City’s network of academics and tech innovators, the team developed a prototype in just three months. In six, they had launched an iOS app, quickly reaching 15,000 users. Researcher was born.
Today, the platform has two million users, and provides easy access to over 19,000 peer-reviewed journals, pre-prints, blogs, and sources (including research from our own Molecular Sciences Research Hub). White City was the perfect ecosystem for this type of collaboration, with academics and inventors working side-by-side. As the company grew bigger, it could expand here, and is currently based in our Scale Space. Read more on the collaboration.