Meta (academic company)

Artificial intelligence company

Not to be confused with Meta Platforms or Meta (augmented reality company).

Meta ULC

Founded| 2009
Founders| Sam Molyneux, Amy Molyneux
Defunct| March 31, 2022 (2022-03-31)
Headquarters|

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Area served

| Academia, government, publishing, industry
Services| Scientific knowledge network powered by machine intelligence

Number of employees

| 350
Website| meta.org

Meta ULC was a Canadian unlimited liability corporation performing big data analysis of scientific literature, which was acquired by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and shut down in 2021, effective in 2022.[1]

## History

[edit]

### Beginning

[edit]

Meta Inc., formerly Sciencescape Inc.,[2] was founded in 2010 by Sam and Amy Molyneux. Before co-founding Meta, Sam Molyneux studied cancer genomics at the Ontario Cancer Institute at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto.[3][4] The service was developed with the intention of curating the millions of articles in the area of academic publishing.[5][6][7][4][8][9]

The company was headquartered in Redwood City, California[10] (formerly Toronto, Ontario, Canada[5]) and operated Meta Science, a literature discovery platform.[6][7][3]

As of September 2016, Meta had analyzed over 26 million papers and profiled 14 million researchers.[11] Using natural language processing, Meta scans articles - as well as the millions of articles stored in open-access repositories - collecting information about authors, citations and topics. Participating publishers receive exposure for their journals in return.[12] These include the American Medical Association, BioMed Central, Elsevier, Karger, SAGE Publishing, Taylor & Francis, Wolters Kluwer, and the Royal Society.[13][14] The technology for the platform was developed via a joint partnership between Meta and SRI International.[15]

### Merge with Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

[edit]

Meta merged with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2017, marking the Initiative's first acquisition.[16]

### Shutdown

[edit]

On October 28, 2021, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announced the sunset of Meta, with a proposed shutdown date of March 31, 2022.[1]

## Features and specifications

[edit]

Meta includes coverage of the biomedical sciences with real-time updates from PubMed and other sources.[17] The website provides access to over 22 million papers with publication dates as early as the 1800s.[8][9] By sifting through papers and learning from user behavior, the service pinpoints key pieces of research and provides relevant search results.[6] Meta also provides visualizations about a field of research by organizing papers by their date of publication and citation count and then presenting the information in a way that allows users to quickly identify key historical papers.[3]

The Meta Science research platform uses algorithms that allow users to sort new publications according to subject matter.[5] Users can subscribe to feeds for areas of research including biology, genes, diseases, genetic disorders, drugs, people, labs & institutes, and journals.[5][4][18]

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b Chan Zuckerberg Science Initiative, Meta Transition, retrieved October 28, 2021
2. ^ "Meta Launches Universal Machine Intelligence Platform to Unite the Fragmented Scientific Information Ecosystem". MarketWatch. November 3, 2015. Retrieved May 8, 2018.
3. ^ a b c The Data Visualizers, MaRS Commons Magazine, retrieved January 12, 2014
4. ^ a b c Mashoka Maimona (June 13, 2013), Tech companies make final pitches at Extreme Startups 2013 demo day, Financial Post, retrieved January 12, 2014
5. ^ a b c d Darrell Etherington (June 16, 2013), Sciencescape Wants To Solve Academic Research Discoverability, Deal With The Noise Problem, TechCrunch, retrieved January 12, 2014
6. ^ a b c Sciencescape aims to sift through snowballing science research, Wired.co.uk, retrieved January 12, 2014
7. ^ a b Candice So (June 13, 2013), Sciencescape cataloguing research papers everywhere, one essay at a time, itbusiness.ca, retrieved January 12, 2014
8. ^ a b Hazman Aziz (June 26, 2013), Sciencescape -- A new kid on the block, Hazman Labs, inc, archived from the original on July 3, 2013, retrieved January 12, 2014
9. ^ a b Vaibhav (June 18, 2013), Sciencescape in the Future of Scientific Research, TechnoGiants, retrieved January 12, 2014
10. ^ Chan Zuckerberg Initiative signs lease in Lane Partners' new Redwood City building, San Francisco Business Times, January 25, 2017, retrieved October 31, 2018
11. ^ About Meta, Meta, September 13, 2016, retrieved September 13, 2016
12. ^ Carl Straumsheim (May 10, 2016), Predictive Analytics for Publishing, Inside Higher Ed, retrieved September 12, 2016
13. ^ Teri Tan (April 29, 2016), Digital Solutions in India 2016: Big Data and AI with Meta, Publishers Weekly, retrieved September 12, 2016
14. ^ Partners, Meta, September 12, 2016, retrieved September 12, 2016
15. ^ "Chan Zuckerberg Initiative makes first buy, a Canadian artificial intelligence startup". www.bizjournals.com. January 26, 2017. Retrieved 2018-03-16.
16. ^ "Chan Zuckerberg Initiative acquires and will free up science search engine Meta – TechCrunch". techcrunch.com. 23 January 2017. Retrieved 2018-03-14.
17. ^ Darrell Etherington (June 13, 2013), Extreme Startups Demo Day Wrap Up: Canadian Startups Make A Strong Showing, TechCrunch, retrieved January 12, 2014
18. ^ Under The Hood, Sciencescape.org, retrieved January 12, 2014

## External links

[edit]

* Official website

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Defunct|

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Services|

* Software comparison
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Tools|

* Analysis software
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* Web 2.0 Suicide Machine

Concepts|

* Attention inequality
* Confessions page
* Cybersectarianism
* Fediverse
* Online identity
* Small-world experiment
* Small-world network
* Social network
* Thirst trap
* User profile
* Virtual community
* list

Applications|

* Hospitality exchange service
* Mobile
* Online dating
* comparison
* Social network advertising
* Social network hosting service
* Social profiling

User interface|

* Activity stream
* Brand page
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* Like button
* Online petitions
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Implications|

* Issues
* Privacy concerns
* Problematic social media use
* Use in investigations
* Use in politics
* User gender differences

Protocols|

* ActivityPub
* AT Protocol
* Decentralized Social Networking Protocol
* Distributed Social Networking Protocol (defunct)
* Micropub
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* OpenSocial (defunct)
* OStatus
* Pump.io
* XMPP

Authority control databases

International|

* ISNI
* VIAF

National|

* United States

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