4 ms·

I just want to put this thought out on the open, what about crowd-funding? Would that ever work for research? Like you can make all the papers free to read, and

I just want to put this thought out on the open, what about crowd-funding? Would that ever work for research? Like you can make all the papers free to read, and at the end provide a link to donate to their research. Or they can showcase that this is what we are working on, this is how far we have gotten. Now we want to do this but for that we need this amount of Money. Help us out? Would something like that work? Or the primary success of crowd sourcing is that people see it as a "pre-order market for cool new gadgets" instead of the whole "this thing should exist! I'll help!" ?

acadien 13y ago
This is really a problem with our government. The NSF is shrinking and is now too small to support the number of physical scientists in the US. If funding were prevalent and actually scaled with the size of academia then people wouldn't be so desperate to make a show of their research. It is common practice to claim your research will result in magical leaps in technology, such as curing cancer while making cars more fuel efficient, essentially lying to get funding. On a side note, this is one of the reasons why science news articles are often so far fetched and inaccurate. Certainly making journals free and open is a step in the right direction, it reduces the financial strain on Universities and researchers. It also the opens the doors for amateur scientists to do solid independent (predominately theoretical) work. I should be clear though, we already have a kind of crowd sourcing system in place: taxes and government funding agencies. The solution isn't to implement crowd sourcing, that would be like putting a band-aid on a leaky submarine. The solution is to correct the system we already have in place. A central problem with crowd sourcing directly to the public is that the public _cannot_ be swayed to fund science that isn't sexy. A portion of fundamental science is actually pretty dull and difficult to explain, but needs to be done for the sake of progress.
- Anon84 13y ago
  > Certainly making journals free and open is a step in the > right direction, it reduces the financial strain on > Universities and researchers. It also the opens the doors > for amateur scientists to do solid independent > (predominately theoretical) work. Actually, open acess journals are more expensive to univeristies and scientists. Instead of the university paying for a fixed subscription fee out of the "overhead money" it collects, the scientists themselves have to py a fee per paper published out of their own grants. http://www.plos.org/publish/pricing-policy/publication-fees/ http://www.plos.org/publish/pricing-policy/publication-fees/ This clearly penalizes funding strapped researchers and even those who are more productive. Those $2900 per paper adds up quickly. Edit: formatting
  - cowsandmilk 13y ago
    Nothing prevents the university from paying publication fees out of overhead. In fact, many universities do so. Additionally, it should also be pointed out that eLife, where Randy is the Editor-in-Chief, is open access and does not charge publication fees. http://elife.elifesciences.org/publishing-fees http://elife.elifesciences.org/publishing-fees
    - Anon84 13y ago
      Yes, what I mean is that per paper publications fees can easily add up to more than the regular subscription fees.
  - acadien 13y ago
    I can't defend PLOS's publication fees, I don't know anything about them. I can say it costs roughly ~$5000 to make a journal article open access in most journals I am familiar with. So $2500 doesn't seem so bad, although it is clearly way too high. There is also the question of whether these are optional fees.
lambda 13y ago
I'm not sure that Kickstarter style crowd-funding would work well for basic research. Two of the keys to its success are rewards, that mean that people who fund the project actually get something for their money, and projects that are of a reasonable scope to be completed within a year or so (while there are definitely projects that last longer, those also tend to be the ones that people are least happy about). Basic science researcher generally doesn't produce very much that would be attractive as awards, and lots of good research will take years to complete. Remember that crowdfunding is not just for new gadgets, but in general it's for new things that people want to consume; gadgets, art, music, games, and the like.
Fomite 13y ago
There is some crowd funding for science, but it's pretty much small potatoes - it'll cover a trip, or maybe a single publication, or the budget for some preliminary data. Even tiny, "Pilot Study" grants are often for an order of magnitude more than usually comes in via crowdfunding. And some of the large studies...just isn't going to happen without major changes in how and what people fund. Science is expensive.
- troymc 13y ago
  What do you call it when tens of thousands of volunteer birdwatchers pay for their own personal efforts (in time and money) to do bird monitoring in the UK? Cumulatively that's a lot of money, not "small potatoes." http://www.bto.org/about-bto http://www.bto.org/about-bto The BTO isn't the only example. There are many others (e.g. the BOINC projects, Planet Hunters, EyeWire, The Amateur Sky Survey). Maybe you'll object, saying that's not "crowdfunding." If it's not, then what is it? There's definitely funding being spent, on scientific research, by "the crowd" (i.e. the general public).
  - toufka 13y ago
    It is, and those are great examples. But it's only accessible to the most sexy, most accessible, most 'fun' disciplines. The harder stuff just cannot be crowd-sourced right now. Biomedical research is expensive, dull, and removed from most peoples' experience, and so it'd be very difficult to get a crowd interested in funding basic biomedical research.
    - xerophtye 13y ago
      But i think Biomedical can still attract people. Nobody likes diseases. everyone would be ok to contribute to eliminating diseases or coming up with better cures/surgeries. What's tough, is to get funding for weird theoretical quantum mechanics stuff. How do you ask for funding to things people have absolutely no idea about?
      - tlarkworthy 13y ago
chmike 13y ago
This would expose fundinging to the cognitive bias of the vulgaris pecus.

acadien 13y ago

This is really a problem with our government. The NSF is shrinking and is now too small to support the number of physical scientists in the US. If funding were prevalent and actually scaled with the size of academia then people wouldn't be so desperate to make a show of their research. It is common practice to claim your research will result in magical leaps in technology, such as curing cancer while making cars more fuel efficient, essentially lying to get funding. On a side note, this is one of the reasons why science news articles are often so far fetched and inaccurate. Certainly making journals free and open is a step in the right direction, it reduces the financial strain on Universities and researchers. It also the opens the doors for amateur scientists to do solid independent (predominately theoretical) work. I should be clear though, we already have a kind of crowd sourcing system in place: taxes and government funding agencies. The solution isn't to implement crowd sourcing, that would be like putting a band-aid on a leaky submarine. The solution is to correct the system we already have in place. A central problem with crowd sourcing directly to the public is that the public _cannot_ be swayed to fund science that isn't sexy. A portion of fundamental science is actually pretty dull and difficult to explain, but needs to be done for the sake of progress.

Anon84 13y ago
> Certainly making journals free and open is a step in the > right direction, it reduces the financial strain on > Universities and researchers. It also the opens the doors > for amateur scientists to do solid independent > (predominately theoretical) work. Actually, open acess journals are more expensive to univeristies and scientists. Instead of the university paying for a fixed subscription fee out of the "overhead money" it collects, the scientists themselves have to py a fee per paper published out of their own grants. http://www.plos.org/publish/pricing-policy/publication-fees/ http://www.plos.org/publish/pricing-policy/publication-fees/ This clearly penalizes funding strapped researchers and even those who are more productive. Those $2900 per paper adds up quickly. Edit: formatting
- cowsandmilk 13y ago
  Nothing prevents the university from paying publication fees out of overhead. In fact, many universities do so. Additionally, it should also be pointed out that eLife, where Randy is the Editor-in-Chief, is open access and does not charge publication fees. http://elife.elifesciences.org/publishing-fees http://elife.elifesciences.org/publishing-fees
  - Anon84 13y ago
    Yes, what I mean is that per paper publications fees can easily add up to more than the regular subscription fees.
- acadien 13y ago
  I can't defend PLOS's publication fees, I don't know anything about them. I can say it costs roughly ~$5000 to make a journal article open access in most journals I am familiar with. So $2500 doesn't seem so bad, although it is clearly way too high. There is also the question of whether these are optional fees.

lambda 13y ago

I'm not sure that Kickstarter style crowd-funding would work well for basic research. Two of the keys to its success are rewards, that mean that people who fund the project actually get something for their money, and projects that are of a reasonable scope to be completed within a year or so (while there are definitely projects that last longer, those also tend to be the ones that people are least happy about). Basic science researcher generally doesn't produce very much that would be attractive as awards, and lots of good research will take years to complete. Remember that crowdfunding is not just for new gadgets, but in general it's for new things that people want to consume; gadgets, art, music, games, and the like.

Fomite 13y ago

There is some crowd funding for science, but it's pretty much small potatoes - it'll cover a trip, or maybe a single publication, or the budget for some preliminary data. Even tiny, "Pilot Study" grants are often for an order of magnitude more than usually comes in via crowdfunding. And some of the large studies...just isn't going to happen without major changes in how and what people fund. Science is expensive.

troymc 13y ago
What do you call it when tens of thousands of volunteer birdwatchers pay for their own personal efforts (in time and money) to do bird monitoring in the UK? Cumulatively that's a lot of money, not "small potatoes." http://www.bto.org/about-bto http://www.bto.org/about-bto The BTO isn't the only example. There are many others (e.g. the BOINC projects, Planet Hunters, EyeWire, The Amateur Sky Survey). Maybe you'll object, saying that's not "crowdfunding." If it's not, then what is it? There's definitely funding being spent, on scientific research, by "the crowd" (i.e. the general public).
- toufka 13y ago
  It is, and those are great examples. But it's only accessible to the most sexy, most accessible, most 'fun' disciplines. The harder stuff just cannot be crowd-sourced right now. Biomedical research is expensive, dull, and removed from most peoples' experience, and so it'd be very difficult to get a crowd interested in funding basic biomedical research.
  - xerophtye 13y ago
    But i think Biomedical can still attract people. Nobody likes diseases. everyone would be ok to contribute to eliminating diseases or coming up with better cures/surgeries. What's tough, is to get funding for weird theoretical quantum mechanics stuff. How do you ask for funding to things people have absolutely no idea about?
    - tlarkworthy 13y ago

chmike 13y ago

This would expose fundinging to the cognitive bias of the vulgaris pecus.