Open science and crowdfunding? BLOG#2 – Claire van Teunenbroek, PhD. Candidate

"What do crowdfunding and open science have in common and why is this important?

In this blog series we consider the option of crowdfunding as a funding method for (small parts of) scientific projects. Remember from the first blog that crowdfunding is an online funding method currently used by several Universities. It is important to note that crowdfunding for research is in an early stage. Also, in general the assembled amounts are small compared to the amounts given through research grants. Still, crowdfunding has its value for universities and researches alike: it is transparent, democratic, fun and promotes networking. In the following blog we focus on  the transparent nature of crowdfunding. Also, we connect it to a populair and current debate: the need for open science....

A need for transparency: open science movement

In general, the trust in charities has increased, but the Dutch population still shows a distrust towards charities. Therefore, the transparent (that is open) nature of crowdfunding makes it a particulairly attractive funding method in general, but also to fund science projects. The scientific world is asked to be more transparent.

More and more scientists publish their data on an open science platform. Journals, institutions and funders are asking researchers to share the data and materials underlying published articles. The increasing focus on openness is part of the ‘open science’ movement. It is argued that the sharing of data and materials facilitates the reproducibility and replication of research findings, which allows future research to build on past work or even reuse old data to answer new research questions. The openness begins even before researchers collect their data, researchers are also asked to pre-register their research ideas before they collect the data. For instance, I pre-registered my field experiment at the website of ‘aspredicted.org’ (https://aspredicted.org/u5w9u.pdf). For another interesting blog about open science you can visit the website of my promotor René Bekkers or just click here...."