With the greatest of ease, #SciFund scientists leap over all possible university objections to crowdfunding for science.
The vast majority of scientists participating in the #SciFund Challenge are based at universities (and by the way scientists, sign up here for #SciFund). And for lots of reasons, the #SciFund money raised by those university-based scientists will likely need to be routed through their universities.
To avoid a million headaches, it is really important for #SciFund scientists to clear their crowdfunding campaigns with their local grants administrators before projects launch in May. As crowdfunding for science is so new, many university administrators will be totally unfamiliar with it and might well raise a host of objections.
Note from Jai. This post is by Kalani Kirk Hausman, one of the participants in the first round of the #SciFund Challenge. You can see his #SciFund project here and you can find him on Twitter at @KKHausman.
#SciFund is about a lot more than money - just like life (cue corny music).
While chasing crowd-funding support for the STEMulate Learning program during the initial #SciFund Challenge, I did not reach an ambitious funding goal for a full high-performance computing lab. At first read, this sounds like failure – but was not.
The second round of the #SciFund Challenge is open for business – sign up here!
So, Jarrett and I have been analyzing the data from the first round of #SciFund to determine the money patterns in science crowdfunding (check out Jarrett’s earlier posts here and here). This time, let’s drill down a bit to see what we can learn about those who contributed to #SciFund projects.
If you haven’t heard, the second round of the #SciFund Challenge just kicked off. If you are a scientist and are interesting in engaging the public with your science and raising money for your research along the way, you can sign up here.
What the standard peer review process feels like for scientists.
Okay, on to the topic of this post. One of the changes for the second round of #SciFund is that we are adding a very mild review process for scientists that want to participate. What is this review process about? And why are we making this change in the first place? After all, isn’t crowdfunding all about the wisdom of crowds?
What’s the review about?
This new #SciFund review process is not the formal peer review process that scientists go through to get manuscripts published in scientific journals. I certainly don’t knock traditional peer review, as the process leads to much better science.
Coming at you hard like the Terminator, #SciFund is back! Fewer bullets with us though.
We had so much fun with the first round of #SciFund, let’s do it again. The second round of #SciFund Challenge begins now! Are you a scientist who wants to raise money for your science and engage the public with your research. We want you to get involved and sign up!
Welcome back, all. It’s been a few months, and I hope everyone has been enjoying the great science updates from a variety of projects and is still basking in #SciFund’s warm glowing warming glow. We’re even starting to gear up for #SciFund 2, Electric Boogaloo, so keep your eyes peeled.
But before we jump into round 2, Jai and I wanted to know more about round 1. What made for a successful project? How does a crowdfunded proposal compare to a non-crowdfunded grant proposal? What do you need to do to make #SciFund work for you?
To get at these questions and more, we administered a survey to the participants of #SciFund, and we’re starting to analyze it. We have a lot of ideas about relationships and hypotheses to test, but, in the spirit of crowdsourcing, we wanted to crowdsource some of this part of the project to you – the hypothesis generation. I’d say we’d open up the data, but, sadly, cannot due to Human Subjects requirements (see end of this post for an explanation).
Some relationships from the survey data. Nothing doing with traditional funding % and goal achieved. Some hints that folk with blogs raised more money, but we do have some outliers.
So, below the cut is the survey we administered as well as the data fields from Dr. Zen’s excellent efforts. Take a look at it, and post any hypotheses or analyses you want to see done! Feel free to get as fancy, detailed, or nutty as possible, bearing in mind that we have 48 data points, and some of the data are continuous and some categorical.
Go to Facebook and fill out the “Create a New Account” section. You can change everything later, so feel free to be honest about your name and everything else and if you want to change the account to represent an organization later, you can. Once you’ve submitted that information, you’ll have to verify your identity by entering a code sent from Facebook to your email address or phone. Following the code verification, Facebook will walk you through how to set up your profile. You will definitely want a profile picture (which you can change later), but finding people you know is optional at this point, as is touring privacy settings. Either of these activities can be done later, once your account is set up. I’d recommend taking the privacy tour, though, because it’s only 4 short screens to look through and the first screen is especially useful- it shows you how to set viewing privileges for every post you will make.
And that’s it- you’re ready to go!
Facebook’s frontpage, viewed from a computer’s internet browser.
2. SEND US YOUR USERNAME
A. Computer view: click on your profile picture and your first name at the very top of the screen (the red box in the image below). Then read the address bar in your browser, which should say something like “facebook.com/username”. Please send us the “username” part of that address.
The top of the Facebook profile page for Virginia Schutte, viewed from a computer’s internet browser. There is a red box around the profile icon, which can be used to return to the profile at any time.
B. Mobile view: Your username is currently unavailable to view from a mobile device, so head on over to a computer.
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The two kinds of email that we send.
Announcements about upcoming events: mostly about our upcoming classes (sent out every 1-2 months).
SciFund Solutions: 1-minute communication tips for scientists (sent out every 1-2 weeks).
