[3] In 2009, Microsoft Research Asia Group launched a beta tool called Libra in 2009, which was for the purpose of algorithms research in object-level vertical search,[4] data mining, entity linking, and data visualization.

[5] Libra was redirected to the MAS service by 2011 and contained 27.2 million records for books, conference papers, and journals.

[3] Although largely functional, the service was not intended to be a production website and ceased to be developed, as was originally intended when the research goals of the project had been met.

[7][8] The fact that this decline was not reported on earlier indicated to the authors that the service was largely ignored by academics and bibliometricians alike.

[8] In July 2014, Microsoft Research announced that Microsoft Academic was evolving from a research project to a production service, and would be integrating with Microsoft's flagship search engine, Bing, and its intelligent personal assistant service, Cortana.