No papers? No problem. Scientists who have historically been at a disadvantage when pursuing traditional funding sources — for example, those who lack extensive experience or who do not demonstrate a good publication record — are now the most successful at sourcing money from the public.
But the money they net via crowdfunding websites tends to be smaller than grants secured from funding agencies, according to the team led by Henry Sauermann, a social scientist at the business school ESMT Berlin, Germany.
To get an understanding of who succeeds at crowdfunding science, Sauermann’s team analysed 700 pitches posted by scientists on the crowdfunding platform Experiment.com, which is based in New York City. This website is available for scientists to bid for research money from the general public (See ‘Platforms for crowdfunding research’ and ‘Creators of crowdfunding campaigns’).
