Research Stir – FAQ

1. Is this website needed at all, when there is a galore of fundraising organizations working for scientific research today?

Yes, this website is needed tremendously to change the way science is being supported today. We see it absolutely unnecessary and in fact retarding scientific research, that unaware science supporters feed big chunks of their gifts (up to 80% at some cases) to in reality support the fundraising organizations instead of the scientific research as they intended.

Besides the single role of bringing support, we also promote scientific research through providing a stage for establishing research collaboration, research products and services sharing and exchange, open research publishing, as well as other scientific research resources, which none of the fundraising organization provide. We do it all in one universal platform.

2. How are you different from crowdfunding organizations and websites like Petridish, Kikstarter, TechMoola and others?

First of all we are not a crowdfunding organization. We connect science supporters directly with research project teams. We don’t collect funds or take part in contracting, financial, intellectual property and other dealings between the two parties. We don’t interfere or direct, but rather we let the best science support be achieved by the interested parties brought together and working directly.

We differ in extent of support the research projects that we promote require. We are not a narrow horizon crowdfunding website oriented predominantly on petty milking families and friends of presenting scientists. Our promotions of scientific research projects seeking support are directed mostly to corporate supporters. The existing crowdfunding organizations rarely if ever achieve a project funding to reach $50, 000.00, with majority of the “scientific projects” on their sites falling in well below $5,000.00. Research Stir on the other hand rarely accepts for promotion projects requiring less then 50,000.00 in support. Such is the scale of support required by majority of projects presented on our site. We promote full scale, academic level, frequently trans-disciplinary research projects that regularly seek funding from major national research funding institutions. In contrary, the “scientific projects” presented on regular crowdfunding sites are simply small research procedures at best, which in fact don’t constitute true, full scale, academic level scientific research projects.

Different from crowdfunding organizations we provide much broader scope of research support through, additionally helping scientists to connect to other research groups to establish research collaboration. We also provide the most affordable publishing platform for scientific research manuscripts. Finally, we provide Market and Forum, where scientists can exchange research goods and ideas. None of such extra support services for scientists can be found on crowdfunding websites. Comprehensive help for scientist is not the goal of crowdfunding organizations. In most cases their primary corporate goal (defined by their incorporation provisions) is to make profit for themselves, and only secondary to help generate a trivial financial support for scientist, if possible. Contrary to that Research Stir primary goal (defined by our incorporation provisions) is to provide a comprehensive scientific research support, through our extensive services, which importantly, we provide free of charge to scientists.

Finally, unlike any of the crowdfunding for science organizations, we are a team of true scientific research professionals, with around two decades of bench research experience each. We truly understand what is needed to help scientific research. Consequently, we have set up our services accordingly. There is many organizations claiming to support scientific research, when in fact they concentrate primarily on “how THEY can make a Buck” off the bleeding scientific research. Many of such organizations choose to support only the scientific research projects that promise to generate best income for the crowdfunding organizations themselves. We condemn such practices as they contribute to the scientific research progress decline. In contrary, we don’t select and reject projects based purely on the assessment what expected profit they may generate for us. We let the supporters to evaluate and judge research project prospects and value at their own discretion and will. We also never deduct any funds to cover our services, from the support that with the help of our services goes directly to scientists and their research projects.

3. How are you making profit then?

We are a Social Purpose Company – a newly established legal entity in Washington State, and as such we are relived from the legal requirement to maximize company profit at all times. The Social Purpose Company status legally allows us, and in fact encourages us to concentrate on the social purpose we promote, and not on generating profit for our shareholders as a primary obligation.

We make profit to sustain our social purpose activity through paid advertising on our web pages and by charging interested science supporters and contractors minimal fee for providing contact to research project presenting investigators. We also charge employers a minimal fee for placing research job ads on our Classified Ads pages. Finally, we recover costs of editorial review and publication of research manuscripts in our E-Journal. All together our charges are set at the lowest practical level just to support our continuous activity. Overall, the minimal level of our charges doesn’t compare in any way to the generous deductions that most fundraising organizations sponsoring scientific research “justify” for their own proceedings from the funds raised. 

4. Who can submit scientific research project for promotion to Research Stir?

Research Stir accepts research project submissions for promotion on our web pages from qualified researchers of nonprofit and for profit organizations, US based and international, in all fields of natural sciences including medicine. Research Stir welcomes proposals from all qualified scientists, engineers and educators, including faculty, research staff and students.

5. How much do you charge for your services?

Most of our services are free of charge for scientists – you will need to provide your institutional E-mail address from a legitimate research institution, profit or non-profit to qualify for that status. The free services for scientists include among others: research project promotions for support and for collaboration, and advertising on Research Stir Classified pages.

We charge supporters a fee of $175.00/per project, for providing contact to research project presenting investigators.

We charge employers a fee of $25.00/per add, for posting job ads on our Classified pages.  

We charge businesses for advertising on our web pages. Fees vary depending on the ad placement, ad size and ad media. For details please inquire.

For full listing of our charges visit the Research Stir Pricing page.

6. I would like to support, contract or partner with  a project, which I found on your site. How can I do that?

For directions and guidelines how to support the scientific project of your choice go to the Supporters pages.

7. I admire your social purpose goal of providing help to the scientific research. How can I contribute to your goal?

You can support our goal in many ways. For suggestions go to the Promote Us page. Thank you in advance!

Have a question or comment? Put it down in the form below. We may add it to our FAQ.