A Guide to Scientific Crowdfunding

Julien Vachelard; Thaise Gambarra-Soares; Gabriela Augustini; Pablo Riul; Vinicius Maracaja-Coutinho

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002373

A Guide to Scientific Crowdfunding

PLoS Biol. 2016 Feb 17;14(2):e1002373. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002373. eCollection 2016 Feb.

Authors

Julien Vachelard^{1

2}, Thaise Gambarra-Soares^{1

2

3}, Gabriela Augustini⁴, Pablo Riul⁵, Vinicius Maracaja-Coutinho^{1

2

6

7}

Affiliations

¹ Beagle Bioinformatics, Santiago, Chile.
² Dodo Funding, Santiago, Chile.
³ Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Estudios Urbanos, Pontifícia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
⁴ Olabi Makerspace, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
⁵ Departamento de Engenharia e Meio Ambiente, CCAE, Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Rio Tinto, Brazil.
⁶ Centro de Genómica y Bioinformática, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Mayor, Santiago, Chile.
⁷ Instituto Vandique, João Pessoa, Brazil.

Abstract

Crowdfunding represents an attractive new option for funding research projects, especially for students and early-career scientists or in the absence of governmental aid in some countries. The number of successful science-related crowdfunding campaigns is growing, which demonstrates the public's willingness to support and participate in scientific projects. Putting together a crowdfunding campaign is not trivial, however, so here is a guide to help you make yours a success.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Communication
Crowdsourcing / economics*
Research / economics*
Social Media

Grants and funding

This work was partially funded by fellowships from Austral Incuba, Chile, to VMC (grant 14-SSAF-27061-9)—http://australincuba.cl/; and by CAPES Science without Borders (PDSE/CsF), Brazil, to PR (grant BEX2516/14-04)—http://www.cienciasemfronteiras.gov.br/. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.