Crowdsourcing for research funding

[Kron3007]

I would first try to secure corporate funding for the research first. Maybe it's just me, but a research project funded by crowdsourcing just seems a bit too crackpot for my taste.

I don't want to get into too many details, but it isn't really a research project.  It is analogous to raising money to preserve some ancient texts that are at risk of being destroyed.  They will serve as a resource for research projects, but the crowdsourcing would really be used just to create the collection. 

Either way, I don't really see a problem with crowdsourcing for funds.  It is unconventional, but other than that what would your concern be? 

[mamselle]

Hmm...if it's, say, early manuscripts, is the crowdsourcing both anonymous, and one-way, so that individuals don't feel as if they've "bought a piece of," or a share in, the book, say, and might then want to see it sold to realize its value?

And where will items that need to be archived be housed? Will they be donated to the school library's Rare Books collection? Or a public archive or museum? What if those institutions can't accept them (space, not their kind of thing, no curator to oversee the collection, etc.)?

If you already have some collector slavering away for you to give it to them, then maybe no problem there, but what about public access? Or will it be on a permission-only basis?

If those things are not very clearly defined, I'd see some areas for worry....

M.

[apl68]

Hmm...if it's, say, early manuscripts, is the crowdsourcing both anonymous, and one-way, so that individuals don't feel as if they've "bought a piece of," or a share in, the book, say, and might then want to see it sold to realize its value?

And where will items that need to be archived be housed? Will they be donated to the school library's Rare Books collection? Or a public archive or museum? What if those institutions can't accept them (space, not their kind of thing, no curator to oversee the collection, etc.)?

If you already have some collector slavering away for you to give it to them, then maybe no problem there, but what about public access? Or will it be on a permission-only basis?

If those things are not very clearly defined, I'd see some areas for worry....

M.

These sorts of matters--especially making sure that the items have a guaranteed, reasonably accessible home that makes sense for them to be housed in waiting for them--would need to be spelled out clearly, so that contributors knew just what they were contributing to.

[Kron3007]

Hmm...if it's, say, early manuscripts, is the crowdsourcing both anonymous, and one-way, so that individuals don't feel as if they've "bought a piece of," or a share in, the book, say, and might then want to see it sold to realize its value?

And where will items that need to be archived be housed? Will they be donated to the school library's Rare Books collection? Or a public archive or museum? What if those institutions can't accept them (space, not their kind of thing, no curator to oversee the collection, etc.)?

If you already have some collector slavering away for you to give it to them, then maybe no problem there, but what about public access? Or will it be on a permission-only basis?

If those things are not very clearly defined, I'd see some areas for worry....

M.

These sorts of matters--especially making sure that the items have a guaranteed, reasonably accessible home that makes sense for them to be housed in waiting for them--would need to be spelled out clearly, so that contributors knew just what they were contributing to.

It isn't actually a collection of documents, this is just the best analogy I can giev while keeping some anonymity.  My intention is to house the collection in my lab and make the resource available to other researchers and industry.  Perhaps one day the resource would be taken over or funded by a government agency (they have a history of doing similar things), but until then my intention would be to use these funds to maintain the resource and make it accessible (perhaps through cost recovery fees).  This would all be spelled out in the pitch.  The main issue is that if someone dosnt do this soon, the resource could be lost for good so we need support to get the ball rolling quickly.   

[mamselle]

OK, if it's something lab-related, there's another mare's nest to consider, possibly--this is based on a real-life tangle I had to deal with for nearly a year as an EA at a pharma.

My boss had worked with a mentor at one of the state universities during his doctoral program and knew the guy had some DNA samples that would be useful for the kind of drug pre-testing they were going to be doing shortly.

The former prof was happy to transfer some material; my boss was able to set aside funds to pay for it, and the temperature-controlled shipping it needed, so it looked fairly simple and do-able.

Enters the Legal Department. The transfer memo took 9 months to bounce back and forth between the company and the university, everyone having to put their fingerprints on it in a dozen different ways. We'd get one snarl untangled and another, Hydra-like, would rear its head.

Now, both were internal Legal Departments, so we didn't show any costs for any of their wrangling (except in the actual situation, which was tragi-comic, or maybe comi-tragic, we couldn't finally decide which...).

By the time all the wrangling was done, it was too late. My boss had received a promotion to a position that no longer put him in charge of a lab that would do the work, and the new person being brought in didn't have the background or the connections to keep that study going--and then the Big Bosses decided the drug development strain wasn't worth continuing, anyway (someone else had come up with something that swept the market and left our idea in the dust).

So after all the politely worded, carefully structured letters and phone calls and form-filling-out and money arrangements, it all came to naught.

tl, dr: Beware of the Legal Department....

M.

[Kron3007]

Yes, I have had my share of MTAs and such.  Am in the process for one as we speak.  For this, we would need to have pre-fab agreements to collect and provide access.  This is pretty standard for this kind of thing, so it is a good point bit not insurmountable.