Crowdsourcing websites like Kickstarter and
IndieGoGo encourage fans of musicians, filmmakers, amateur inventors, writers,
and other creative professionals to financially support projects like
independent documentaries or self-published novels. These sites have
experienced great success, with the leading crowdsourcing website Kickstarter
raising $267 million for more than 61,000 projects since its creation in 2008.1 Although some artistic projects do
intend to have meaningful impact within the world, most crowdsourcing websites
are largely void of such endeavors and even forbid projects that seek to raise
money for charity or “causes.”2 So, the crowdsourcing pool ends up including
many frivolous projects, such as one that proposed the
creation of the “world’s largest jockstrap,”3 while others struggle to find a
home. Scientific research projects have
been late to join the crowdsourcing game, as evident in both Kickstarter and
IndieGoGo’s lack of a “science” or “research” project category.
Within the last year, however, scientific crowdsourcing opportunities
have been increasing. In March of 2012, a new platform called PetriDish.org
launched with the objective of hosting just
scientific projects.4 The site welcomes applications from any
researcher affiliated with a
university, nonprofit, or other such institution who is proposing to
crowdsource a project in a variety of fields, including archaeology, biology,
conservation, ecology, health, and natural history. Several PetriDish projects
have raised significant funds, such as one aiming to buy a “supercomputer” in
order to search for moons in other solar systems, which collected approximately
$12,000 in just 30 days.5
About a year prior to PetriDish, 2 California scientists created an initiative called
the #SciFund Challenge with the goal of increasing the popularity and success
of scientific crowdsourcing projects.6 A volunteer-run organization,
SciFund serves as a community-support base for scientists interested in raising
money through this new avenue by providing educational materials and
encouraging peer-to-peer advice on navigating the often unfamiliar territory of
crowdsourcing.
First, scientists apply to have their proposed project accepted into the
SciFund Challenge. Importantly, each proposal is peer reviewed by a panel of
volunteer scientists who ensure that the project is based on legitimate
science, that it seeks to answer a legitimate question within that scientific
discipline, and that it attempts to raise an amount of funds that is in line
with what the project will set out to do. According to SciFund co-founder Jai
Ranganathan, PhD, a center
associate at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, this is
essential for science crowdsourcing, which he said is very different than crowdsourcing
for artistic projects.
“Either you like the band or you don’t,” he said, “and there isn’t any
further judgment needed. But for science, the danger always is that you could
have somebody fraudulently put up a perfectly nice looking video that fools
people. We want to make sure that doesn’t happen” (oral communication, July 3,
2012).
Once a project is deemed legitimate and accepted into the SciFund Challenge,
the scientists receive guidance from SciFund blog entries and articles on how
to take a complicated project and simplify it in a way that is
interesting and engaging for the general public. They also learn how to communicate
with the public through Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of social networking.
PetriDish.org also provides similar assistance in its blog entries.
Then scientists start putting together project outlines, which include the
rewards sponsors will receive for donating, and film informational
videos that will serve as the “face” of the project viewed by potential
funders.7 Fellow scientists are welcomed to critique each other’s
videos and offer input.
Once ready, they launch their projects on RocketHub, an up-and-coming crowdsourcing
website. SciFund continues to provide support for these scientists throughout
the month-long crowdsourcing cycle, especially focusing on how to create a
public “fan base.” According to Dr. Ranganathan, this is the most important
aspect of crowdsourcing success, even more so than the quality of a project’s
video or outline.
“The hardest part is getting people to that video,” he said. “The only
way it works is to build an audience over time.”
Botanist and assistant professor of biology at Trinity University in San
Antonio, Kelly Lyons, PhD, recently finished crowdsourcing a RocketHub project with
SciFund’s help, and said both sites played a critical role in her experience. “Many
scientists are not great at self-promoting,” she said, “and many of us, while
savvy with software, are pretty limited on time to figure out new software, web
interfaces, and social media. We’d rather focus our time on research and
writing” (e-mail, June 27, 2012).
Creators of the SciFund Challenge — Dr. Ranganathan and Jarrett Byrnes,
PhD, a biology professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston — hope the
initiative will narrow the gap between society and science by allowing the
public (as opposed to a few select funding agencies) to have input on what is
worthy of funding, as well as improve the forecast for science funding, which
has been looking bleak as ever.
“All of the traditional sources of cash for science — the National
Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, NASA, private
foundations — are getting harder and harder to access,” wrote Dr. Byrnes in
SciFund’s first blog entry, titled “A Call to (Virtual) Arms.” “And the
situation is probably only going to get worse. So what is a scientist to do?
How can our funding be as secure as RoboCop’s?”6
The last sentence refers to the SciFund founders’ frequent mention of one
of those comical crowdsourcing projects: a 2011 Kickstarter project that raised
more than $67,000 to build in Detroit a statue of RoboCop8 — the title
character in the 1987 science fiction movie that follows a human police officer
who is murdered and then reborn as a “powerful cyborg” to fight crime.9
Dr. Lyons, who has sat on US Department of Agriculture granting panels,
said she has seen the rates of funding from some national agencies go from
about 80% down to 10%. “Ten is really rough,” she said, “particularly for
schools where professors have very low teaching loads and are expected to bring
in big research dollars to support their research agendas. It might get pretty
ugly if the US [government] continues on this path. You’re sure to see tuition
rates at state-funded institutions, who rely heavily on these research funds,
continue to go up” (email, June 27, 2012).
SciFund has sponsored 2 rounds of projects so far, with 43 projects raising
$100,345.10 The most recent round, which finished in May of 2012,
had almost half of its projects meet their funding goals.
“For crowdfunding,” said Dr. Ranganathan, “44%
is pretty astounding. SciFund challenge is the most important thing I’ve done
with my science career. It’s been so rewarding to see that people are paying
attention. For a long time, academia hasn’t valued outreach at all. But it’s
changing. I can see it changing.”
First Experiences with Crowdsourcing
Several botanical, SciFund-sponsored research projects just completed
their crowdsourcing initiatives on RocketHub, including projects studying
reforestation of cottonwood trees (Populus
spp.), seaweed’s impact on the Galapagos Islands, the circulation of water
within saguaro cacti (Carnegiea
gigantean), and a parasitic South African plant called Cats
Nails (Hyobanche spp.).11 Although SciFund currently lacks
a category for medicinal plant projects, Dr. Ranganathan
said one could be added once they receive an herbal
medicine-related proposal.
Dr. Lyons’s project, “What’s that Weed?!,” sought funds to publish a scientific
guide of plants and weeds found throughout urban areas of South Texas. She raised
$970, or 57% of the project’s $1,715 goal.12 Dr. Lyons said she
thinks her project did not meet its goal for several reasons, including the
subject of the research itself.
“I love weeds. I think that learning about urban weeds might help us
become more aware of the environment in general. But the onus falls on me to
make this appealing,” she explained. “Others
work with bees, birds, whales, etc… What
would you rather read about? We joke about it, but ‘charismatic megafauna’
really are more appealing to the average American. That, and things that can heal us,
particularly if it involves healing children or babies!”
Haldre Rogers, PhD, a tropical forest ecologist and conservation biologist at
Rice University, launched a crowdsourcing project to study the declining
populations of wild boonie chile pepper (Capsicum frutescens) in Guam. Having raised 50% of the
funding goal, Dr. Rogers will receive about $650 for her research (e-mail, July
16, 2012).
“I learned several lessons from this first effort,” said Dr. Rogers. “One is
that maintaining an online presence and developing a video takes a lot of
time!” Dr. Rogers, who noted that most of her project funders were people she
already knew and fellow SciFund scientists, recommended that future
crowdsourcing scientists start early and seek significant feedback from peers,
tweet and blog often and well ahead of the project’s official start, and market
to newspapers, university news services, and relevant organizations.
“Ideally, the [donations] would be from people that I don't know, but
I failed to reach and motivate these people to donate,” she said. “I
suspect other participants more effectively used traditional and social media
outlets to get their projects publicized widely.”
Based on how much time she found it took to crowdsource, Dr. Rogers suggested
that this new funding avenue might be easier for younger scientists, most of
whom are more accustomed to the demands of Facebook and Twitter.
“I suspect that blogs and tweets will be a great way for some people to
communicate science to the public,” said Dr. Rogers, “but that it's not
something for every scientist. But maybe I'm behind the times! I think
crowdsourcing is a great way for undergrads and grad students to raise small
amounts of money to fund research projects that may be in their early stages of
development and thus not likely to receive larger grants from traditional
sources.”
Based on her experience, Dr. Lyons recommends that other scientists who
are interested in crowdsourcing pick a small, well-defined
project with widespread appeal, use high-quality photos, develop a simple and
interesting project description, and set a small and reasonable donation goal.
“The bottom line,” she said, “is that you have to know what it is about your
subject that might be appealing to the average person.”
Unlike other crowdsourcing websites, including PetriDish.org, that
allow project creators to have the funds only
if they meet 100% of their goal, RocketHub lets them take whatever amount they are
able raise. Crowdsourcing websites take ranging portions of funds as payment for
the services they provide. RocketHub takes 8% from successfully funded projects
and 12% from projects that fall short of their funding goal; PetriDish takes 5%
from successfully funded projects, in addition to the 3-4% typically charged by
online payment services.4
Although she welcomes the additional outlet for fundraising, Dr. Lyons expressed
concern for the potential consequences of crowdsourced science. For example,
the tasks involved — such as paying attention to and thanking donors, providing
incentives, maintaining project updates, writing blog entries, and updating
Facebook — can be very time consuming. And, Dr. Lyons said she fears that if crowdsourcing
were to become the primary mode of science funding, “the
important-but-less-interesting-to-the-general-public projects will get lost.”
Dr. Ranganathan was
initially concerned about the possibility that crowdsourcing would benefit only
“cuddly science,” as he called it, but he said it has not turned out that way.
One of SciFund’s most successful projects, for example, sought to study E. coli
in the gut of mice.
“Are you half a step ahead if you’re working with pandas?” he said. “Of course.
But our results show that every scientist can do it regardless of field. The
reason [these projects] were successful is because they came up with a very
compelling story of what their science was about and promoted in a very
successful way.”
More information on the #SciFund
Challenge is available at www.scifundchallenge.org. PetriDish is
available at www.PetriDish.org.
—Lindsay Stafford Mader
References
- Kickstarter stats. Kickstarter website. Available at: www.kickstarter.com/help/stats?ref=footer.
Accessed June 28, 2012.
- Project guidelines. Kickstarter website. Available at: www.kickstarter.com/help/guidelines?ref=footer.
Accessed July 1, 2012.
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15 crazy/awesome Kickstarter projects (photos). The Huffington Post. June 7,
2012. Available at:
www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/07/15-crazy-awesome-kickstarter-projects-photos_n_1571279.html#slide=1055466.
Accessed June 25, 2012.
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Frequently Asked Questions. PetriDish website. Available at: www.petridish.org/faq. Accessed July 13, 2012.
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Kipping D. Help us find the first exomoon. PetriDish website. Available at: www.petridish.org/projects/help-us-find-the-first-exomoon.
Accessed July 13, 2012.
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Byrnes. The #SciFund Challenge: a call to (virtual) arms. SciFund Challenge
Blog. July 29, 2011. Available at:
http://scifundchallenge.org/blog/2011/07/29/the-scifund-challenge-a-call-to-virtual-arms/.
Accessed June 25, 2012.
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Slivka K. Young scientists embrace crowdfunding. New York Times: “Green” blog. May 29, 2012. Available at: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/young-scientists-embrace-crowdfunding/.
Accessed June 28, 2012.
- Detroit needs a
statue of Robocop! A Sculpture project in Detroit, MI by Imagination Station
Detroit. Kickstarter website. Available at: www.kickstarter.com/projects/imaginationstation/detroit-needs-a-statue-of-robocop?ref=live. Accessed July 1, 2012.
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RoboCop (1987). Internet Movie
Database (IMDb) website. Available at: www.imdb.com/title/tt0093870/. Accessed
June 25, 2012.
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Faulkes Z. Round by round: part 2 [blog]. June 20, 2012. #SciFund
Challenge website. Available at: http://scifundchallenge.org/blog/category/scifund-analysis/.
Accessed July 1, 2012.
- SciFund projects. RocketHub website. Available at: www.rockethub.com/projects/scifund. Accessed July 1, 2012.
-
What’s that Weed?! RocketHub website. Started November 1, 2011.
Available at: www.rockethub.com/projects/3840-what-s-that-weed. Accessed June
27, 2012.
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